Knowledge about the far-east in 16th Century England?.

If you could ask the most Educated people in England in the early 1500s, like Thomas Cromwell and Sir Thomas More, and Cardinal Wolsey their knowledge about the Far-East like China and Japan, what would they have known?.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Many of them would have been familiar with Marco Polo's work, so they would have understood that there was such a thing as China (a big country on the Asian mainland) and Japan (another society, a bit different, on some islands off the Asian mainland).
 
Those who care may even think "Cathay" and "China" are different places, with Cathay being the mysterious northern inland thing.
 
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