The main content of Xu Xiake’s travel notes

Xu Xiake’s Travel Diary is the travel diary of Xu Hongzu, a famous Chinese tourist and geographer. Due to the wars in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, many of them were lost. The remaining pages were compiled into a volume by later generations, with a total of 20 volumes. The missing parts can be inferred from the epitaphs of many other people, such as his friends, family members, later travel notes and other materials.

Xu Xiake began traveling from the year of his wedding at the age of 22 (1607) until the year before his death (1640), traveling to 16 provinces in China.

In 1607, he began to travel, and his mother made him a long-distance travel crown. He traveled to Taihu Lake and went boating, and climbed the East and West Dongting Mountains. The travel notes are missing;

In 1609, "Li Qi, Lu, and Yan" , Hebei, went up to Taidai, paid homage to Confucius, and visited Mencius Temple, the hometown where he moved three times, and the withered tung trees hanging in Yishan Mountain." The travel notes are missing;

In 1613, he entered Zhejiang, walked alone from Cao'e River to Ningbo, crossed the sea and wandered around Gashan, travel notes are missing. Starting from March 30th is the first volume of travel notes, a trip to Tiantai Mountain and a trip to Yandang Mountain.

In the winter of 1614, he traveled to Jinling (Nanjing), but the travel notes are missing;

In 1616, he traveled to Baiyue, Huangshan, Wuyishan, Jiuqu River, and Hangzhou West Lake;

In 1617, the first wife died of illness and did not travel;

In 1618, he visited Huangshan and Lushan again, and passed Boyang Lake; at the end of the year, he married his second wife;

1619 In 1621, my wife gave birth to a son and did not travel;

In 1620, I traveled to Jiuli Lake in Xianyou, Zhejiang, to test the tide of the Qiantang River;

In 1621-1622, my mother was critically ill and did not travel;

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In 1623, he traveled to Songshan, Huashan, and Taihe Mountains (Wudang Mountains), starting the second volume of his travel notes;

In 1624, he accompanied his mother to visit Jingxi and Gouqu (in Zhejiang), without Travel notes;

From 1625 to 1627, my mother passed away and she kept her filial piety and did not travel;

In 1628, I traveled to Fujian;

In 1629, I traveled to Beijing and Tianjin Jixian Panshan, travel notes are missing;

In 1630, he visited Fujian again;

In 1631, there was no travel;

In 1632, he visited Tiantai Mountain and Yandang Mountain, Boating on Taihu Lake;

In 1633, we traveled north upstream to Wutai Mountain and Hengshan Mountain;

From 1634 to 1635, the eldest daughter-in-law had a grandson and the second son married a wife, so there was no travel;

< p> From 1636 to 1640, he went to Zhejiang by boat and traveled from Zhejiang to Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan. He did not return home for four years. The third volume to the 19th volume of the travel notes are all travel notes of these four years. There are records every day, some of which are lost. Volume 20 contains his poems and essays, prefaces written by others, etc.

In 1641, he returned home and died of illness at the age of 56.

Xu Xiake's Travel Notes is the earliest travel note in China that records the geographical environment he passed through in relatively detail. It is also the earliest book in the world that describes the karst landforms and examines their causes in detail. Except for major events at home, Xu Xiake almost never stopped traveling throughout his life and recorded in detail what he saw along the way. This is a rare research material for geographers and archaeologists.