Poets in ancient times all liked traveling. Why is this?

There are three reasons why ancient poets liked traveling. Firstly, most poets in ancient times had relatively good families, and a solid family background could support their travels. Secondly, traveling around mountains and rivers can enrich the materials they display and inspire them to write poems. The third point is that the world is so big, even the ancients wanted to see it.

Let’s talk about the first point first. In ancient times, the literati and poets who could often write poems generally had very wealthy families, so they did not need to worry about their livelihood. Just spend this life traveling around and doing what you want to do, which is really one of the joys of life. There were many famous poets in ancient times who liked to travel, such as Xie Lingyun, Xu Xiake, Meng Haoran, Wang Wei, Li Bai, etc. Of course, some of them wanted to express their feelings through travel because they were unsuccessful in their official career, but traveling I didn’t want to go back while swimming. Ancient people traveled more crazily than modern people. Basically, the poets we know who like to travel have visited all the great rivers and mountains of the motherland.

The second reason is that traveling around mountains and rivers can enrich poets' material for writing poems and inspire inspiration for writing poems. The artistic conceptions contained in many of the landscape poems we have learned are not imagined. They were all written through on-the-spot investigations and field trips. Therefore, when reading these landscape poems, it is as if we saw what the poets saw at that time. Those scenes are generally real. Moreover, people like Li Bai and Xie Lingyun composed impromptu poems while traveling around the mountains and rivers, and they have become famous throughout the ages. This is the inspiration brought to them when they travel around the mountains and rivers. Since you are a poet, of course you must actively pursue inspiration. This is similar to how modern writers experience life and feel life in order to write. The two have the same purpose. Inspiration often comes faster among mountains and rivers.

The third reason is that travel is not only a passion of modern people, but ancient people also liked traveling. Everyone has a restless heart and wants to see how beautiful this world is, and the great rivers and mountains of the motherland in many fields, so that this journey on earth is not in vain.