What is travel prose?

Travel prose refers to articles that describe travel experiences in a narrative literary genre.

Prose is a narrative literary genre that expresses the author's true feelings and has a flexible writing style. Travel notes, as the name suggests, refer to articles describing travel experiences.

Some travel notes are argumentative, such as Fan Zhongyan's "Yueyang Tower" and Wang Anshi's "Travel to Baochan Mountain"; some are scientific, such as Li Daoyuan's "Three Gorges"; some are lyrical. , such as Liu Zongyuan's "Little Rock Pond", Ouyang Xiu's "The Drunkard Pavilion", "Fengle Pavilion", Yuan Hongdao's "Manjing Travels"

In modern and contemporary literature, travel notes are given It has historical and humanistic connotations, among which Jian Bozan's "Visiting Ancient Times in Inner Mongolia", Yu Qiuyu's "Notes on Mountain Dwelling", Han Han's "Big Country, Small Town", and Lu Dong's "All the Way East" are the most representative. Extended information

According to the tradition of Chinese literature, travel notes are texts written by ancient literati to express their feelings after traveling through mountains and rivers. In literary works, although there are different opinions about the origin of travel writing, it is undisputed that it has been blooming in the literary garden to this day. Especially since the "May Fourth" New Culture Movement, the writing of travel writing, together with other categories of writing, has It has become an important force in prose creation.

For example, Xu Zhimo's "Gossips about Living in Fei Leng Cui Mountain", Sun Fuyuan's "Fuyuan Travel Notes", Yu Dafu's "Return to Hometown", Zhong Jingwen's "West Lake Collection", Xu Dishan's "Shangjing Mountain" , Lin Yutang's "Spring Travel to Hangzhou", Yu Pingbo's "Five Diary Travels in Shanyin", Shen Congwen's "Song Notes of a Travel to Hunan" and so on.

Today’s travel notes are basically written as travel instructions and schedules, and they should not be considered literature. To put it more seriously, travel notes have become the main type of textual garbage produced by current prose writing.

If we judge from ancient travel writing, this person must be a wanderer, not a person wandering around. Of course, it does not include Xu Xiake and others, because according to the standards of ancient wanderers, he was not a real wanderer. Therefore, the famous "Xu Xiake's Travels" is defined by us more as an excellent work in geography rather than literature. book.

Baidu Encyclopedia--Travel Notes

Baidu Encyclopedia--Prose

People's Daily Online--Travel Notes and Prose: Writing the Feelings of a Traveler (New Observations on Literature)