"Thousands of Miles of Journey" will never part until death

Xu Xiake (January 5, 1587-March 8, 1641) was named Hongzu, also known as Zhenzhi, and nicknamed Xiake. He was born in Jiangyin, Nanzhili (now Jiangsu). His ancestors were from a famous family in Jiangyin. His great-grandfather Xu Qia went to Honglu to register. His grandfather, Xu Yanfang, served as Guanglu Cheng. However, his father Xu Youmian's family path began to decline. He hid himself for the garden and built it at home. In his spare time, he brought three or five family servants to travel between Suzhou and Hangzhou to tour the mountains and rivers. He hated high-ranking officials and noble people and did not interact with officials and village gentry. This upright and arrogant character was very jealous of the feudal forces, so he was often oppressed. When Xu Youmian died at the age of sixty, Xu Xiake was already eighteen years old. His father's personality and interests will naturally have an impact on Xu Xiake. My mother is a very capable woman. She is cheerful, reasonable, hard-working and good at weaving. The cloth she weaves is thin and good, and the silk she weaves is as light as cicada wings,"the market person can easily recognize it." ¢ÚRegardless of her old age and frail health, she undertakes all housework and supports Xu Xiake in traveling. She personally prepared the luggage for her son and made the crown for a long journey to show her dignity. When she was seventy-three years old, in order to relieve Xu Xiake's concern for her during her travels, she specially asked Xu Xiake to accompany her to tour Jingxi and Gouqu, deliberately walking in front of her son along the way to show her health. Xu Xiake's ability to become a talented person and make contributions is precisely because of the support of this great mother."Women succeed."

Due to the rich collection of books in Xu Xiake's family, it has created excellent conditions for Xu Xiake to read a lot of books. He has been very curious about books since childhood and likes to read books such as history, geography and travelogues. He has a strong desire to travel and investigate the Five Mountains in his "years". In the thirty-fifth year of Wanli (1607), Xu Xiake, who was twenty-two years old, walked out of his house for the first time. First, he traveled to Taihu Lake near his hometown, "climbed the Dongting Mountains in the east and west, and visited the ruins of Lingwei's father-in-law". Since then, he has continued to travel and write travel diaries at the same time. In the thirty-seventh year of Wanli, "Liqi, Lu, Yan, and Jijian, went to Taidai, worshiped Konglin, and Yumeng Temple moved three times to his hometown, and Yishan hung and withered Tong". In the forty-first year of Wanli, he went to visit Tiantai Mountain and Yandang Mountain in Zhejiang. Today, there are "Diary of Tour Tiantai Mountain" and "Diary of Tour Yandang Mountain". In the forty-second year of Wanli, he visited Jinling (now Nanjing City) in winter. In the forty-fourth year of Wanli, he went to visit Baiyue Mountain and Huangshan Mountain in southern Anhui, and then went to Wuyi Mountain in Fujian. Today, there are travel notes to visit these three places. In the forty-fifth year of Wanli, he visited Shanzuan and Zhanggong Zhu Caves in Yixing, Jiangsu. He accompanied his mother to visit Jingxi and Juru. In the forty-sixth year of Wanli, he visited Jiuhua Mountain, Lushan Mountain, and then Huangshan Mountain. There are travel notes to visit Lushan Mountain and Huangshan Mountain again. In the forty-eighth year of Wanli, he visited Jiuli Lake in Xianyou, Fujian, and today there are travel notes to visit Jiuli Lake. In the three years (1623) of In the first year of Chongzhen (1628), he visited Luofu Mountain in Guangdong, and visited Fujian for the third time. This is "Before the Journey to Fujian". In three years of Chongzhen, he visited Fujian for the fourth time, and this is "After the Journey to Fujian". In five years of Chongzhen, he visited Tiantai again and Yandang three times, and now he has the travel notes of visiting these two places. In six years of Chongzhen, he went to Beijing to visit Wutai Mountain and Hengshan Mountain in Shanxi, and now he has the travel notes of visiting these two places. From the ninth year of Chongzhen to the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, Xu Xiake, aged 51 to 55, made the "Wanli Ya Zheng" in the southwest. The travel notes written were the main part of "Xu Xiake's Travel Notes", accounting for 93%. In June of the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, he returned to his hometown from Yunnan and He died on the 27th day of the first lunar month of the following year (March 8) and was buried in Ma Wan, Jiangyin.

Xu Xiake's main works are travelogues, as well as poems, letters, etc. Due to the war, many of his manuscripts were lost. The current "Xu Xiake's Travels" was collected and sorted out by later generations. Originally circulated in manuscripts. In the 41st year of Qianlong (1776), Xu Xiake's clan, Xuzhen, collated and printed Li Jieli's manuscript, which was the first woodcut of "Xu Xiake's Travels".

From the age of 22 to the age of 55, Xu Xiake traveled more than half of China in 34 years, leaving footprints in seventeen provinces, cities and autonomous regions such as Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan, Beijing, etc. His tour was based on the nine years of Chongzhen (1636), which can be divided into two phases before and after. In the early stage, because he was concerned about his old mother, he mainly visited places of interest and historical sites. The travel time was not long, usually two or three months, at least ten days and a half months. The intervals between each trip were a few months or a year or two or three years, and the longest was four years. It was not every year when he was away. The travel notes written during this period accounted for only 7% of the entire travel notes. Although he did not write as many travelogues as he did in the later period, and his contribution to geography was not as great as in the later period, through his early travel, he obtained a lot of first-hand information and corrected some of the erroneous conclusions of his predecessors. For example, to correct the mistake of his predecessors that Tiandu Peak is the highest peak of Huangshan Mountain, put forward the correct view that Lotus Peak is the highest peak of Huangshan Mountain. To correct the mistake of "Daming Unification Zhi" that the water of Yandang Mountain Dalongqiu originated from Yanhu Lake, he pointed out that the water of Yanhu Lake "has nothing to do with Longqiu". He traced the roots of certain geographical phenomena and put forward scientific explanations, such as the differences in the vertical distribution of plants in Tiantai Mountain and their reasons. The reasons for the different phenology in Songshan, Taihua Mountain and Taihe Mountain, and the reason why the water speed of Ningyang River in Fujian is higher than that of Jianxi, etc., are all important results he achieved during this period. In addition, he also accumulated a lot of experience and methods of travel and exploration, cultivated and exercised the spirit of enduring hunger and overcoming difficulties, and laid a solid foundation for the later "Wanli Xia Zheng".

The "Wanli-ya Expedition" that began in the ninth year of Chongzhen lasted four years, traveled through nine provinces, and traveled more than 30,000 miles. After going through countless difficulties and obstacles, I have not wavered in encountering theft, desperate food, and danger, and I am determined to move forward. What is even more admirable is that 7% of the time I traveled with illness. It was not until I was "sick enough to walk" that I was called by the Sheriff of Lijiang to be carried home in a sedan chair. He died soon after. He sacrificed his precious life for the travel and investigation. His great achievements in geographical science have made China one hundred and fifty to two hundred years ahead of the Western world in the fields of karst geomorphology and speleology.

The Academic Value of Xu Xiake's Travels

Although "Travels of Xu Xiake" records what the author saw and heard in a diary, it is very rich in content. It is not only a beautiful and readable literary travelogue, but also a geographical work of great academic value. The content recorded includes the sources of mountains and rivers, topography, landforms, mineral deposits, biological forms, industrial and agricultural production conditions, urban settlements, architecture, history, geography and other folk customs. Among them, landforms, hydrology, meteorology, geology, animals and plants are the most extensive, and the academic value is particularly great.

1. Geomorphological achievements. Xu Xiake has seen many landforms during more than 30 years of travel and inspection. There are seven types of landforms recorded in the travel notes: karst landforms, mountain landforms, red bed landforms, flowing water landforms, volcanic landforms, periglacial landforms and applied landforms. He has described as many as 102 landforms with names. Among them, the karst landform in southwestern China is particularly detailed.

In terms of surface karst, Xu Xiake comprehensively and systematically recorded all kinds of geomorphological forms of surface karst in these areas through on-the-spot investigation of the most developed areas of karst landforms in the southeast, central and southwestern regions of our country, such as stone buds, lysis ditches, karst fissures, sinkholes, funnels, shafts, dissolution depressions, karst trough valleys, karst basins, blind valleys, dry valleys, karst valleys, skylights, natural bridges, karst lakes, karst springs, peak forests, solitary peaks, caves, piercing mountains, and karst Maoshan. Some of the names of these landforms he remembered are consistent with the current ones, while others are different. Such as the stone bud, dissolving ditch he called "stone calyx", "calyx", "stone pattern", "stone tooth", "stone bone"; sinking cave he called "Yangketan", "< unk >", "Dragon Ball Cave"; funnel he called "kettle bottom point"; shaft he called "deep well"; dissolving depression he called "pan wa", "dong"; karst trough valley he called "dock"; karst basin he called "pan gully", "dian", "dock"; blind valley he called "falling water pit"; dry valley he called "dry stream"; karst valley he called "gorge"; karst skylight he called "stone gap", "stone orifices", "stone sinus"; natural bridge is the same as now; karst lake he called "pool", "pond", "Tan", "Haizi", "Lake"; he called "Spring" for karst springs; he called "Shishan", "Shi Feng" for peak forests, "Dushan" and "Duxiu" for isolated peaks; he called "Rock" for caves; "Moon Rock" and "Through Mountain" for piercing mountains; and "Stone Peak on the top of the Earth Mountain" for karst landforms. In addition, Xu Xiake also made an incisive discussion on the distribution range and regional differences of karst landforms. It can be seen that Xu Xiake has a system of classification and naming of surface karst landforms. This situation would not be possible without in-depth and systematic investigation and study of surface karst.

In terms of underground karst, Xu Xiake's discussion is also very exciting and rich in content, including karst caves, cave deposits, underground rivers, underground lakes, cave waterfalls, etc. Xu Xiake's exposition is based on extensive and in-depth field investigations, so it has high scientific value. There are a total of 288 caves recorded in "Xu Xiake's Travels", and 250 caves were personally inspected by him, accounting for 87%. This figure does not include caves he visited but not recorded in the existing "Xu Xiake's Travels", such as Zhanggong Cave, Shanjuan Cave, etc. The content describing the cave includes twelve items, including cave size and direction, cave type and morphological structure, cave accumulation, cave organisms, cave climate, cave sound, cave archaeology, cave utilization, color of stones in the cave, and cave origin. In some places, he also described his techniques for exploring caves. This is a fairly complete scientific document on karst geomorphology and spelology in the world, reflecting the most advanced level of the world at that time. Xu Xiake was the world's earliest great karst and speleologist.

2. Achievements in aquatic literature. "Xu Xiake's Travels" devotes a large amount of space to describing the types of water bodies and hydrological characteristics of various places, recording 551 rivers, large and small, and 198 lakes, swamps, ponds, and swamps. The description of river hydrology includes basin scope, water system, river size, river flow velocity, sediment concentration, water volume changes, water quality, watershed, underflow, regional differences in river bed, etc. In order to demonstrate the source of the Yangtze River, in his later years, he specially wrote "Jiangyuan Kao", which reasoned to refute the mistake of "Min Mountain guiding the river" and confidently advocated: "Those who push the source of the Yangtze River must be led by Jinsha." It has contributed to people's correct understanding of Jiangyuan.

"Xu Xiake's Travels" refers to the swamp as a "hindrance", "lake" or "dry sea". When he inspected the dry sea in Dazhai, Baoshan, Yunnan, he wrote a rather wonderful treatise on the shape, properties, production performance, and hydrological characteristics of the swamp. The shape, size, biology, soil, hydrology, production, transportation, and physical properties of the swamp were described in detail. Such detailed and scientifically valuable literature on the swamp had never appeared before Xu Xiake. According to Xu Xiake's description, modern geographers believe that the swamp "may be a peat swamp. In this peat swamp, there is a dense vegetation of'grass and green 'growing on it, and there is a peat layer of'grass and soil floating' and'barren soil sinking 'under it, and there are streams that supply the swamp.' This place has now been built into a reservoir, called the Haiba Reservoir. You can no longer see the scene described by Xu Xiake back then.

"Xu Xiake's Travels" also has rich records on underground hot water. He divides underground hot water with different water temperatures into four categories: (1) Cold water springs, which are comparable to cold mineral water and have a water temperature below 25 ° C. (2) Hot springs, which are comparable to low and medium temperature hot water, with a temperature between 25 ° C and 55 ° C.

(3)Hot water springs are equivalent to high-temperature hot water, with temperatures ranging from 55° to 90 ° C. (4)Boiling springs, equivalent to superheated water, have temperatures above 90¡æ. Xu Xiake's classification of underground hot water is very close to the classification of modern underground hot water, which is very valuable. In addition, it records various methods used by people to utilize underground hot water resources at that time, such as bathing, treating diseases, food processing, and extracting mineral resources in underground hot water-sulfur, nitrate, etc.

3. Achievements in human geography. "Xu Xiake's Travels" contains many human geographical contents, such as handicrafts, mining, agriculture, transportation, commercial trade, urban settlements, ethnic minorities, local customs, etc. For example, the book records the origin, mining and smelting of twelve minerals including coal, tin, silver, gold, copper, lead, nitrate, salt, realgar, sulfur, agate, and marble. It is an important historical material for mining and metallurgy in the Ming Dynasty.

4. Literary achievements. In the history of China, some famous geographical classics were circulated because of their high literary value. Such as "Shan Hai Jing","Shui Jing Zhu","Fa Xian Zhuan", etc. The same is true for "Xu Xiake's Travels". The fresh and beautiful writing used to describe things in the book makes readers love it. During the 135 years before the forty-first year of Qianlong, it was passed down entirely by copying with pen by readers. It was not until after the forty-first year of Qianlong that a printed edition was circulated. Many famous artists have made pertinent comments on the literary value of "Xu Xiake's Travels". Some say it is "true, big, and odd', while others say it" describes the scene directly and has never been portrayed into text, but the natural interest flows in the future, and nature is strange and alarming ", and" the first in ancient and modern history." Some people say that it is "the only person who writes travel notes is the only person who compiles it." Some people say,"The meaning of the writing is like the original, and the narrative is like the Longmen... All editors search for strange things, express their rhyme and mark new things, and create their own words." These words of praise are realistic and not overly flattering at all. Xu Xiake is a well-deserved master of travel literature.

In short, Xu Xiake is both a scientist and a writer. He made outstanding achievements in geographical science and also made outstanding achievements in literature. "Xu Xiake's Travels" is not only an outstanding geographical work, but also a great literary work. Xu Xiake and his travels shine brilliantly in both the fields of science and literature.