Appendix 4 “Short Biography of Xu Xiake”
After the end of the Ming dynasty, a new gazetteer for Mount Chicken Foot was compiled by Big Mistake (Dacuo), a monk whose secular name was Qian Bangqi (1602–73). Further revisions to the gazetteer appeared during the reign of the Kangxi emperor, in 1692 and 1703, the former edited by an official called Fan Chengxun (1641–1714). This short biography of Xu Xiake, taken from the edition compiled by Fan, is of particular interest, not just for the details it provides of the transportation to Mount Chicken Foot of the remains of Xu’s companion, the monk Tranquil Hearing, following his death in Nanning, but also for the brief lyrical epitaph by Huang Jiao.
Xu Hongzu, whose nickname was Xiake, was from Jiangyin near Nanjing. Born with a love of travel, his overriding desire was to describe and record all the empire’s wonderful mountains and rivers. He traveled around the country, enjoying the empire’s beautiful scenery.
In the gengchen year of the Chongzhen reign (1640), when he was about to set off to Mount Chicken Foot, he passed by the Welcoming Good Fortune Monastery in Nanjing, where he met a monk called Tranquil Hearing, who also yearned to enjoy the surpassing scenery of Mount Chicken Foot, so they set off together.1 When they reached Guangxi, Tranquil Hearer fell ill. On the point of death, he beseeched Xu Xiake, saying: “I am not going to achieve my ambition to go to Mount Chicken Foot. If I do die, please take my bones there.”
Xiake had great empathy for Tranquil Hearing’s ambition, so he burned the body, placed the bones in a chest urn, and carried them to Yunnan. On arriving at the mountain, he stayed at Siddha Monastery, looking for a suitable spot to bury the monk’s remains to complete Tranquil Hearer’s ambition to travel to the mountain. Transcendent Bank, a monk attached to Siddha Temple, admired his righteousness. He divined a spot on the north side of Mount Writing Brush [Wenbi Shan] and built a pagoda on the tomb.
Huang Jiao from Jinning wrote an epitaph:
He who has hastened hither conveyed his mortal shell;
He who carried it so far traversed that great wilderness.
His ambition was lodged in famous mountains;
These bones will never perish.
The burial ceremony and the pagoda’s construction together signal his ambition’s completion;
We have buried him on this famous mountain
so his name may be known far and wide.
The reputations of Xiake and Tranquil Hearing
derive from their love of the landscape.
After Xiake buried Tranquil Hearing, he came to love the scenery of Mount Chicken Foot, so he stayed on. Mu Shengbai, Lijiang’s Aboriginal Prefecture Magistrate (Tu Zhifu), invited him to compile the Mount Chicken Foot Gazetteer. He produced four chapters, but before completing his work, he had to return home because of illness.
—Translated by Julian Ward
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Source: YJ, 2:1195.
1 The correct year for Xu Xiake’s departure to southwest China is 1636.