Introduction

FAMILY BACKGROUND AND LIFE

Xu Xiake lived during the final decades of the Ming dynasty, a period in Chinese history that has received much attention from historians and literary scholars. Most relevant to Xu Xiake and his travel experiences are two societal changes in the late Ming (roughly 1570–1644) that affected the development of travel writing. First, because of land and water transportation improvements—driven by an expanding commerce-driven economy—all levels of society became more mobile than in any previous period of Chinese history. This improved mobility led to a tremendous rise in tourism. Sightseeing for pleasure flourished in the late Ming. To cite one often-quoted report dating from 1631 and written by one of Xu’s contemporaries, up to twenty thousand people flocked to Mount Tai in Shandong every day during the peak tourist season in spring.³ A significant, related development is this: before the late Ming, the overwhelming number of persons who had the opportunity to travel regularly were government officials, who typically were reassigned to new government posts in the provinces once every three years. Over a career in public service, the average government official could visit notable places around China and sometimes even travel to sites in distant border regions. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, however, many people, including merchants, ordinary tourists, religious pilgrims, and even migrant workers, now had professional and personal reasons to travel. They did so in unprecedented numbers. Unlike in the past, there were no government restrictions on personal mobility. Moreover, private individual travel also became common during the late Ming era. Sometimes, these private travelers were highly educated men who chose not to pursue a career as a government official and instead preferred to devote their lives to other pursuits. Xu Xiake is one such person whose passion for geography and history inspired him to dedicate his life to travel and investigating extraordinary scenic sites.

Xu Xiake came from a family with a long tradition of producing government officials. According to Chen Hanhui (1589–1646), author of Xu’s commemorative tomb biography, his distant ancestor Xu Gu (fl. early twelfth cent.), served as municipal governor (yin) of Kaifeng in Henan, the capital of the Northern Song dynasty.⁴ When alien Jurchen Jin military forces invaded north China in the mid-1120s and later besieged and annihilated Kaifeng (the city fell in January 1127), Xu Gu and many other government officials fled to safety in the south, eventually settling in Hangzhou. A Song exile capital was later established in that city. Xu Gu’s descendants, several of whom served as government officials in the south, settled in areas in and around modern Jiangsu. A fifth-generation descendant of Xu Gu, known as One Thousand and Eleven (Qianshiyi; ca. mid-thirteenth cent.), also a government official, after the Mongol invasion took up residence in a village in Jiangsu near Jiangyin called Wucheng. Xu Xiake’s branch of the Xu family supposedly descends directly from One Thousand and Eleven.⁵ The family’s history during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) is not documented. Still, beginning with Xu Xiake’s ninth-generation relative Xu Qi (1362–1445), we know that at least one family member was summoned to government service during the fourteenth century. Xu Qi did not take the civil service exams, but he responded to a government call to serve as a special envoy to Sichuan, where he convinced proto-Tibetan tribes to pledge loyalty to the Ming. After his triumphant return home, the Xu family’s land holdings increased dramatically under Xu Qi’s leadership, making it one of the wealthiest families in Jiangnan.⁶

Xu Xiake’s great-great-grandfather Xu Jing (1473–1507), like his father Xu Yuanxian (1454–81) before him, passed the provincial civil service examination in Nanjing. This was in 1495. While there, he became good friends with Tang Yin (1470–1524), a brilliant young scholar from Suzhou who came out first in the provincial exam.⁷ The two friends traveled to Beijing in 1499 to take the national-level examination. However, Xu Jing and Tang Yin were accused of bribing a servant of one of the chief examiners, who allegedly gave them the examination questions in advance. Both were thrown into prison. They were later released but barred from retaking the examinations, and the scandal cost the chief examiner his post. Although disgraced, Tang Yin was subsequently able to make a living selling his paintings, and eventually, he became one of the most famous painters in Chinese art history. Xu Jing returned to Jiangyin, where he lived in obscurity, waiting for a pardon until he died in 1507.⁸ Whether Xu Jing and Tang Yin cheated is still uncertain (they allegedly confessed only after being tortured in prison). Still, it is reasonable to assume that the memory of Xu Jing’s suffering and embarrassment cast a dark shadow over his descendants, none of whom served as officials in the Ming government. In any case, the scandal certainly affected the Xu family’s social position and economic status in a negative way.

Xu Jing fathered three sons and two daughters, all of whom settled around the city of Jiangyin in Jiangsu. The family of his second son, Xu Qia (1497–1564), lived in a village near Jiangyin called Nanyangqi. Xu Qia was Xu Xiake’s great-grandfather. Although he attended a government school supervised by the Directorate of Education (Guozi Jian), Xu Qia took and failed the national-level examination seven times. The oldest of his four sons, Xu Yanfang (?–1563), Xu Xiake’s grandfather, had six sons, the third of whom, Xu Youmian (1545–1604), was Xu Xiake’s father.⁹ The acreage of family land inherited by Xu Youmian and his five brothers was less—probably much less—than that distributed to previous generations, resulting in a decline in revenue produced by those limited land holdings.¹⁰ The famous painter, calligrapher, and government official Dong Qichang (1555–1636), in his commemorative tomb biography for Xu Xiake’s father, remarked that the Xu family was in decline.¹¹

This brief family history reveals that Xu Xiake came from a well-to-do family in Jiangyin that was distinguished because it had produced—over previous generations—scholars who had held public office. There is no doubt that Xu Youmian, like his father and grandfather before him, had received a traditional Confucian education aimed at preparing him for success in the imperial examinations and a distinguished career as a government official, which would have helped to repair the family’s reputation and bolster its economic base. However, Xu Youmian never sought public office, preferring to remain home and enjoy managing the family gardens or taking his grandchildren on sightseeing trips to Suzhou and Hangzhou. He disliked government officials so much that he avoided them whenever they came calling at the Xu residence in Nanyangqi.¹² We do not know the source of his aversion to public service and distaste for government officials. Still, the Xu Jing scandal, which was undoubtedly a stain on the family’s reputation, could have affected his thinking. Moreover, Xu Youmian’s decision not to serve the Ming government seems to have influenced his son, Xu Xiake, who was only seventeen years old when his father was seriously wounded in an encounter with robbers during a home invasion. Xu Youmian later died from his wounds.

Xu Xiake likely took and failed the civil service examinations at a young age.¹³ Even if we assume this to be the case, there is no evidence to suggest that he sat for the exams a second time. Whatever the reason, this decision (or inaction) effectively ended the Xu family’s prestigious reputation for producing scholar-officials (none of Xu’s four sons served in government office). Although scholars have speculated about what may have driven him ultimately to reject a possible career in the Ming bureaucracy, his writings say practically nothing about personal matters. Perhaps the simple answer is that he did not have to follow such a career. However, it should be acknowledged that the late Ming was a politically risky time for officials, especially those who dared to criticize government policy. Xu Xiake’s close friend Huang Daozhou (1585–1646), a high-ranking government official, was imprisoned for making candid remarks about the Ming emperor.¹⁴ However, why did Xu Xiake devote his life to travel and exploration? What led him to follow such a course?

Few details are known about Xu Xiake’s early years. We know that he received traditional Confucian schooling, the purpose of which was to prepare him for the examinations. However, he rejected this path. According to Chen Hanhui, as a young man, “Xu was especially fond of extraordinary books and spent excessive amounts of time reading extensively through historical and geographical accounts, illustrated works about the mountains and seas, and the entire corpus of accounts of transcendent beings and eminent recluses. Whenever he read these works, he would need to cover them with Confucian texts, under which he would then enjoy reading these extraordinary books. They made his spirit cheery and content.”¹⁵ It seems likely that Xu’s taste for “extraordinary books” and lack of interest in Confucian classics could have emerged early, especially since his father had rejected an official career and died when Xu was just a teenager. His father’s passing, in turn, may have lessened the pressure on him to sit for the exams. However, his chosen life path would have needed his mother’s blessing.

By all accounts, Xu Xiake’s mother, née Wang, was an extraordinarily capable woman. According to an account written by Li Weizhen (1547– 1626), a high-ranking government official and leading writer and poet in the late Ming, after the death of her husband, Xu Youmian,

she took charge of matters inside and outside the home, succeeding in everything she did. She handled matters in a neat and orderly way, and there was no task she failed to accomplish. By nature, she was fond of planting, gardening, spinning, and weaving. Five of the family’s ten acres of land were dedicated to the residence,¹⁶ ringed by a bamboo fence on which beans were grown. She drew branches to stretch their tendrils and then spread silk sheets to form a net over them. She would get up before dawn and place her spinning wheel under a bower, where beans drooped and dangled, and the loom creaked and clattered. Decades seemed to pass in a single day.¹⁷

To generate revenue, she started a weaving business, which became the family’s primary source of income. She, her daughter, and her daughters-in-law produced cloth that was known far and near for its high quality. This new and thriving business returned the family to secure financial footing, which would have helped finance Xu Xiake’s travels.¹⁸ His mother supported those travels. In an often-quoted passage, she reportedly once said to him, “It is the ambition of men to travel far and wide. The Analects (Lunyu) says: ‘[A son] away from home must always have a specific direction in mind.’ It only asks that a son closely keep track of his distance and time away from home and should leave and return home at an arranged time. So, how could I force my son to stay cooped up like a pheasant inside an enclosure or a horse hitched to the shafts of a wagon?”¹⁹

In 1607, after observing the customary three-year period of mourning for his father, Xu Xiake began his travels. His mother prepared his luggage and made a special hat for him. However, Xu was aware of his filial duties and thus felt uneasy about being away from home, especially as his mother grew older. At the beginning of his Mount Song [Songshan]diary, written in early March 1623, he remarks:

Since childhood, I have cherished the ambition of visiting the Five Sacred Mountains. Because the Arcane Sacred Mountain [Mount Song in Henan] is regarded as superior among them, my admiration of it has been especially heartfelt. For a long time, I have planned to transit through Xiang and Yun, stroke Taihua with my hands, and then take the Linked Clouds Plankway [Lianyun Zhan] at Sword Belvedere [Jiange] as the first leg of my journey to Mount Emei. However, my mother is old, and my ambitions have changed, so I have no choice but to journey now to Mount Taihe, as I had planned earlier, which is a sightseeing trip that accords with having a specific destination.²⁰

“Having a specific destination” alludes to the passage in the Analects just explained. Because of Xu Xiake’s filial obligations to his mother, especially in her twilight years, he selected a closer travel destination (Mount Taihe in Henan) if he thought he might need to return home to Jiangyin on short notice. A journey to Mount Emei in faraway Sichuan would have taken him over 1,200 miles (1,900 km) from home and at least two to three months to complete.²¹

The following year (1624), when his mother reached her eightieth birthday, Xu Xiake was home to join the celebrations. To properly mark the occasion, his mother announced she would accompany her son on a sightseeing trip to nearby Bramble Stream (Jingxi, in modern Yixing Shi, Jiangsu), where they could explore some caves together. One report says she insisted on walking in front of Xu on the way to Bramble Stream to demonstrate her excellent health.²² One observer remarked, “As for her second son’s [that is, Xu Xiake] travels, of the so-called nine traditional divisions of China, his itineraries probably took him to eight of them, and this was accomplished all because Ruren [that is, his mother] made it possible.”²³ She passed away the following year (1625). Mindful of the customary mourning period for a deceased parent, Xu planned no other sightseeing trips. Over the next two years, an unstable political situation on a national level, instigated by the notorious eunuch Wei Zhongxian (1568–1627), led to the death by suicide of Xu Xiake’s good friend Gao Panlong (1562–1626).²⁴ This and related events may also have kept Xu Xiake at home. The political situation finally stabilized after Wei committed suicide in 1627 and Emperor Xizong (r. 1620–27) died. When the new Emperor Chongzhen (r. 1627–44) assumed the throne, Xu Xiake was again on the road, heading south for a sightseeing tour of Fujian.

Xu Xiake’s biographers usually divide his years of travel into two general periods. The first period extends from 1607 until 1633, when he traveled extensively throughout north and south China. Among his favorite destinations were famous mountains, such as Mounts Tiantai and Yandang in Zhejiang. Xu also traveled to Mount Huang [Huangshan] in Anhui and Mount Lu in Jiangxi. The written accounts of his visits to these and other famous mountains are translated in part 1 of this book. His four-year journey to southwest China, which began in 1636, constitutes the second travel period. Selections from Xu’s trip to the southwest are translated in part 2.²⁵ This lengthy trip took him through the modern provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan. Tranquil Hearing and a manservant named Gu Xing accompanied him.²⁶ Until now, a rich, broad assortment of this material from the southwest diaries has not been available in English translation. Examples include Xu’s account of a bloody encounter with murderous river pirates in Hunan, his spelunking expeditions deep into limestone karst caverns in Guangxi, and his observations of, and interactions with, various indigenous border peoples in Yunnan, a remote and sometimes dangerous area that few Chinese travel writers dared to visit during the Ming. One of Xu Xiake’s primary destinations was Mount Chicken Foot [Jizu Shan] in Yunnan, on the distant southwestern border of the Ming empire. During the long journey to Yunnan, Xu and his traveling companions experienced numerous adventures and encountered severe difficulties and dangers. Many of his accounts describing these experiences are translated in part 2 of this book.

Even before his trip to the southwest, Xu had desired to visit Mount Emei in Sichuan. While in Yunnan, he also expressed interest in traveling to Tibet. But Mu Zeng (1587–1646), the chieftain ruler of the Lijiang Aboriginal Office in northern Yunnan who hosted Xu as a guest, prevented him from traveling any farther north because Mu feared danger from a local tribe and bandits along the road.²⁷ Xu’s dream of climbing Mount Emei was also thwarted by poor health, which had seriously deteriorated by the end of his four-year trip to the southwest. Details about his journey home to Jiangyin are sketchy, but it seems almost certain that he did not reach Mount Emei. Mu Zeng arranged for Xu to travel from Mount Chicken Foot to Wuchang (near modern Wuhan Shi, Hubei) in a sedan chair, where he then boarded a boat on the Changjiang that took him downriver to Jiangyin. He reached home in the summer of 1640 and died there on 8 March 1641. He was fifty-four years old.

What explains Xu Xiake’s lifetime devotion to travel and exploration? If we can believe the anecdotes in his biographies, even as a young man, he had a keen interest in geography and history and a corresponding lack of interest in government service. However, several of his closest friends, including Huang Daozhou, did serve as officials in the Ming bureaucracy. His father’s example of not seeking a government post, however. may have inspired Xu to follow other pursuits, while his mother’s support of his travels was undoubtedly influential. The early Qing travel writer Pan Lei (1646–1708), writing in his preface to an earlier version of Xu Xiake’s travel writings, provides a somewhat cryptic yet fascinating insight concerning Xu Xiake’s lifelong devotion to travel and travel writing: “So, after all, what is it that Xiake accomplished? He accomplished something only because he did not set out to accomplish something.”²⁸ In other words, Xu Xiake was not driven by some lofty purpose or noble ambition to achieve fame. Instead, he was motivated by his passion for visiting places known for their matchless beauty and geographical or historical significance. This passion led him to spend decades traveling China’s roads, trails, and waterways.

—James M. Hargett

THE DIARIES: TRANSMISSION AND EDITIONS

The history of transmitting Xu Xiake’s diaries is far from straightforward. Indeed, during the chaotic state of the nation following the collapse of the Ming dynasty in the 1640s, the very survival of the diaries was, at times, seriously at risk. Hence, the first printed edition appeared in 1776, well over a hundred years after Xu’s death. Before that date, the diaries existed only as hand-copied text. Most of our knowledge of the early versions of the diaries is based on the surviving prefaces of these versions as well as an essay written by Chen Hong (fl. 1776) titled “Overview of the Similarities and Differences Among the Various Editions [of The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake]” (Zhuben yitong kaolüe).²⁹

Information about the last few months of Xu’s life is scant, including his return from Yunnan sometime in the summer of 1640 and the time leading up to his death in his hometown of Jiangyin in March 1641. The following year, Ji Mengliang recorded that Xu had handed his diary over and asked him to edit it, saying, “I was compelled to write my diary every day. However, it is jumbled and lacks order.”³⁰ The text then passed briefly into the hands of Wang Yongji (jinshi 1622), Xu’s brother-in-law, before Xu’s eldest son, Xu Qi (1615–45), returned it to Ji Mengliang, saying: “Without your help, Xiake’s ambition cannot be realized.”³¹ Ji wrote, “I could see that Zhongren had arranged the manuscript carefully and put it in sequence. When I reread the text, I saw that it still contained many mistakes. I searched high and low for any more fragments to restore those parts of the text that Zhongren had not touched, compiling and editing it in a logical order and making it into a book to await the final revisions of a great scholar.”³² It was around this time that national events intervened. During military operations conducted by the Qing army, the town of Jiangyin was destroyed; Xu Xiake’s original manuscript was burned, and Xu Qi, his oldest son, was killed.

Ji Mengliang then compiled a second copy of the diaries, titled Diary of Xu Xiake’s Journey to the West (Xu Xiake Xi youji). Ji had to gather the material again, but some parts were missing. Ji Mengliang’s second transcript contains just five volumes of Xu’s journey to southwest China, ending with his visit to Guangxi. This version of the text was in private hands for many years before ending up in the National Library of China in Beijing.

There were several other critical early copies. The first one, not extant, was made by Cao Junfu (n.d.), who copied Ji’s original version. Cao’s copy was itself copied by Shi Xialong (n.d.), who spoke of looking for the text for many years before tracking it down in 1666. He wrote in his preface, “I hurriedly examined the manuscript. The scrawled and jumbled text was complicated to make sense of, and it was possible to make the text into a book only after extensive copying and editing.”³³ Another copy, made in 1662 by Xu Jianji (1634–92), a grandson of Xu Xiake, which includes the journey to Guizhou and Yunnan, covers this latter part of Xu’s long journey and is included in modern versions of the diaries.

The most important of the early hand-copied editions of the diaries was that made in 1684 by Xu Xiake’s son, Li Ji (also known as Li Jieli, 1620/21–1691/92), which was based on a number of the earliest copies, including that made by Cao Junfu, and was used by many later compilers.³⁴ Li Ji included several short essays from around the start of Xu’s visit to Yunnan, such as “Account of a Sightseeing Trip to Grand Splendor Mountain” (You Taihua Shan ji), “Account of a Sightseeing Trip to the Yan Caverns” (You Yandong ji), and “Investigation of the Pan River” (Panjiang kao).³⁵ However, notable gaps totaling around three months remained, including four weeks when Xu was in and around Nanning and a further three weeks when he traveled between Wuding and Yuanmou Counties. Ji Mengliang discussed this gap, pointing out that he had lent this section of the diaries to Ji Yangzhi (n.d.), a relative, who took it to the house of his uncle Xu Yuqing (d. 1645), where it was destroyed just days later in a fire resulting from the chaos surrounding the collapse of the Ming dynasty. The most complete extant hand-copied version of the diaries was produced by Yang Mingshi (1661–1737), who had served as an official in both Yunnan and Guizhou and was thus well placed to pick up any errors that had found their way into the copies made by others.

The first printed edition of the diaries, known as the Qianlong edition, appeared in 1776. Based on the Li Ji (or Li Jieli) volume, along with notes by Yang Mingshi and Chen Hong, this version was edited and has a foreword by Xu Zhen (fl. 1776–1806), a descendant of Xu Xiake:

Wherever his steps took him, he would fashion the landscape into words that together would form a volume, collecting the volumes to create a book that people of an earlier age recognized as extraordinary. Unfortunately, he died before his work was completed. He relied on the Honorable Ji Mengliang to re-edit it into the shape of a book. Soon afterward, it was destroyed in a fire caused by rampaging soldiers. Only because Xu’s son Jieli compiled the edition he picked up from visiting the Shi and Cao families of Yixing did the diaries again form into a book. As copies of the diaries were passed around as entertainment, changes were made, and more than one person introduced revisions. Now, one hundred and forty years later, although I have obtained the early edition hand-copied by Yang Mingshi, a local, and the later edition by the Honorable Chen Hong, there are more copies around. Mistakes have gradually increased.… I compared the two editions and made my hand-copied edition to verify for the present and transmit for the future. I recalled how these two gentlemen had carried out meticulous research, you could say, to preserve the genuine article for later generations, but as later copies were made, mistakes and omissions increased.³⁶

The geographer Ding Wenjiang (1887–1936) produced the first authoritative modern edition in 1928. Ding consulted seven texts, relying mainly on the 1808 version edited by Ye Tingjia (1754–1832). Ding’s edition included earlier prefaces, biographical essays, and poems by and about Xu Xiake, and for the first time, the essays written in honor of Xu Xiake’s mother’s eightieth birthday by Xu’s friends and acquaintances. This was the basis for editions that appeared years before the discovery of the Li Ji hand-copied diary.

The study of the diaries was transformed by the discovery in the National Library of China in Beijing in the 1970s of a hand-copied version of the text edited by Ji Mengliang. In September 1976, Zhou Ningxia (1931–2005), senior editor of the Shanghai Chinese Classics Publishing House (Shanghai Guji Chubanshe), invited two locally based academics, Chu Shaotang and Wu Yingshou, to produce an edition of the diaries, the first to be published since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. On hearing this news, the renowned historical geographer Tan Qixiang (1911–92) showed them a fragmentary version of the diaries he owned. Based on Xu Jianji’s copy, this text covered Xu’s journey to Guizhou and Yunnan. Zhou, Wu, and Chu subsequently sent inquiries to many of the country’s most important libraries and museums. This led to the discovery in the Beijing Library, now known as the National Library of China, of another fragmentary version covering the early section of Xu’s journey to southwest China as far as his visit to Guangxi. This was confirmed as part of the copy made by Ji Mengliang.³⁷

This version added substantial amounts of new textual material for the early stages of Xu’s journey to southwest China, covering the 573 days between 1636 and 1638 he spent in Jiangyou [Jiangxi], Chu [Hunan], and Yuexi [Guangxi]. The earlier version covered 351 days, while the Ji Mengliang manuscript had 507. In addition, many of the individual entries for this period in Ji’s text are substantially longer than those in the earlier version. The most dramatic new material relating to the robbery on the Xiang River in present-day Hunan is translated in part 2.³⁸ That is not to say that gaps do not remain, the most significant being certain sections of Xu’s visit to Guizhou and Yunnan.

Following examination and collation of several versions of the text, Chu Shaotang and Wu Yingshou’s edition (YJ) was published in Shanghai in 1980, while Zhu Huirong’s annotated version (YJJZ) was published in Yunnan in 1985. These editions have since undergone several reprintings as interest in the life and work of Xu Xiake has grown in China. Furthermore, between 2008 and 2009, Zhu Huirong and others produced a four-volume version of the diaries translated into modern vernacular Chinese, published in Guizhou.

The appearance of these greatly expanded versions of the diaries has led, over the last thirty-five years, to the publication of popular material aimed at attracting China’s expanding domestic travel market, academic papers from scholarly conferences, and a biannual journal Xu Xiake yanjiu (Research on Xu Xiake).

—Julian Ward

XU XIAKE AND THE ART OF HIS TRAVEL WRITING

Xu Xiake’s contemporaries often describe him as a qiren 奇人. They further define his travel writings as qishu 奇書 or qiwen 奇文. The Chinese character qi 奇 in these descriptive phrases is used as an adjective and embraces many meanings. China’s oldest, perhaps most authoritative dictionary defines qi as “unusual” (奇, 異也).³⁹ Other lexicons gloss qi as “singular” (that is, without parallel), “extraordinary,” “remarkable,” “fantastic,” or even “wondrous.” For reasons that will emerge in the following discussion, when translating qi into English, we favor the adjective “extraordinary.” So when Xu’s biographers and later literary historians praised him and his writings as endowed with the quality of qi, they said he was an “extraordinary person,” and his travel accounts are likewise “extraordinary.” However, what exactly is “extraordinary” about Xu Xiake and his writings? And what is the significance of this attribute today?

The extensive and irrefutable written evidence documenting the vast extent of Xu’s travels led some modern literary historians to praise him with accolades such as “He was the first person in our country to devote his life to traveling” (Woguo lüxing wei bisheng shiye de diyiren).⁴⁰ “First” in this context could also be considered “greatest,” meaning he traveled longer and farther throughout China than any other premodern person. Some historians have also proclaimed Xu as China’s “greatest” travel writer, but this verdict is problematic. We believe associating a superlative such as “the greatest,” in the sense of “most talented,” is too subjective for application to literary endeavors. Such coveted accolades can be defined in different ways, depending on the intentions of the person using them (“greatest” compared to whom or what?). On the other hand, one can contend that an author’s writing skills are qi or “extraordinary.” Convincing evidence can substantiate such a claim successfully in the case of Xu Xiake.

With some notable exceptions, most travel writers before Xu Xiake preferred to compose shorter accounts—on average, just a few hundred Chinese characters in length—about brief, one-day journeys to scenic or notable destinations, such as a famous mountain, celebrated monastery, or historic landmark or monument.⁴¹ Travel narration—that is, the compass directions followed during the journey, distances covered in li between itinerary stops, and so on—is usually limited. Xu’s predecessors often focused on juxtaposing landscape descriptions with emotional expressions, especially regarding the scene observed. The examples below demonstrate that while Xu Xiake’s travel diaries also mix landscape depiction with occasional personal commentary, this is just one aspect of his writing style. What immediately distinguishes Xu from earlier travel writers is the quantitative extent of his surviving diaries, which is “extraordinary” in the scope of his travels, the hardships he often endured, and the tremendous range in subject matter.

Since Xu was first and foremost a travel writer, it is no surprise that factual geographic description and empirical detail dominate many of his accounts, but there is much more. For instance, on numerous occasions, he provides remarkable literary descriptions of seventeenth-century China’s most pristine mountain and riparian scenery, written in a lively and engaging prose style that rivals, if not surpasses, that of his most distinguished predecessors. Xu also provides reports of his many adventures on the road, such as his harrowing encounter with river pirates on the Xiang River in 1637. That incident, recounted in great detail in the Chu (or Hunan) diary, almost cost him his life. Moreover, in the account following the unexpected death in Guangxi of his close friend, the Buddhist monk Tranquil Hearing, we witness high drama as Xu tells of his encounter with two unscrupulous monks who try to seize Tranquil Hearing’s personal belongings after the monk’s death.⁴² After much disagreeable negotiation, Xu finally manages to take custody of Tranquil Hearing’s cremated remains, which, following his traveling companion’s deathbed wish, he buries almost a year later on Mount Chicken Foot in Yunnan. The diaries also reveal the many dangers facing travelers in the late Ming, not only the physical risks of climbing lofty mountain peaks and exploring deep, subterranean caverns but also threats posed by hostile tribes and human traffickers in border regions such as Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou. In yet another incident, Xu was robbed and abandoned by his servant. Along with these accounts, we learn much from Xu’s reports about the logistical challenges he faced during his travels, especially during his trip to southwest China from 1636 to 1640. For instance, on more than one occasion, he ran out of traveling money, so he had to secure loans from various “connections” he had through third parties or new friends he made while on the road. On another occasion, Xu was forced to sell some of his clothes to buy food. Xu provides detailed information on his itinerary, including distances between the places, the directions of his movements, various means of transportation, places where he spent the night and secured meals, weather challenges, and so on. This sort of information may sometimes seem tedious to the modern reader, but distance, direction, mode of travel, and related references are essential parts of Xu Xiake’s travel writing. His readers, especially those planning travel, wanted to know where he had been, where he was going, and what he saw along the way. This is precisely the reason he records everything he witnesses and experiences.

Xu Xiake’s prose style is eclectic in its use of different language registers, each designed to serve a purpose. No travel writer before or after him wrote in such a varied style. Understanding the function of his different language modes provides insight into what makes Xu and his travel writing “extraordinary.” The survey below outlines the three major types of language one finds in Xu Xiake’s oeuvre. These styles are not mutually exclusive. Xu constantly mixes them in an almost seamless fashion. With familiarity gained from close, patient reading, the discerning reader will spot them. This in turn will help the reader to understand how Xu Xiake manipulates language for effect and why his prose is worthy of admiration and close, critical attention.

TRAVEL IN LATE-MING CHINA

Xu Xiake’s diaries are often celebrated for their detailed descriptions of mountains, caves, and other features of China’s physical environment, but they are equally interesting for the light they shed on the practical details of travel in late-Ming China, particularly in remote parts of the empire.⁵⁵

PREVIOUS TRANSLATIONS

Two complete translations of Xu Xiake’s diaries have been published, one in Korean (Seoul, 2011; seven volumes) translated by Kim Un-hŭi and Yi Chu-no, and the other in Italian (Hangzhou, 2019; two volumes), produced by a team of scholars led by Giorgio Casacchia.⁷⁰ Both are bilingual editions. Two abridged English translations have been published in China: Wang Rongpei et al., trans., The Travels of Xu Xiake (Shanghai, 2011), and Li Weirong et al., trans., Xu Xiake youji (Han-Ying duizhao) (Changsha, 2016). Although both collections are bilingual editions, they are designed for Chinese readers. Notes on place-names and special terms, along with discussions of possible alternate English translations, are written in modern Chinese. As for other translations available to readers of English, aside from diary passages included in literary anthologies, book chapters, and journal articles, only one book-length, abridged translation has appeared in print: Li Chi’s (Li Qi, 1902–89) The Travel Diaries of Hsü Hsia-k’o (Hong Kong, 1974). While Professor Li is to be commended for introducing China’s most outstanding travel writer to English readers, the scope of her translation is limited to Xu Xiake’s mountain diaries, which Li Chi contends are “the most important” among Xu Xiake’s surviving travel accounts.⁷¹ The result of this choice, however, is that English readers were not introduced to the engaging literary accounts and fascinating scientific observations made during the final sightseeing trip of Xu Xiake’s life, which lasted from 1636 to 1640 and took him to the remote border regions of the Ming empire in what is now Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan. A second concern is that Li Chi’s translation, completed in the 1950s but not published until 1974, is based on Ding Wenjiang’s 1928 edition of The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake, which, as mentioned earlier, has now been replaced by the expanded, modern editions compiled by Zhu Huirong (rev. ed. 2017), and Chu Shaotang and Wu Yingshou (rev. ed. 2007). Thus, the Li Chi translation cannot be regarded as competing with or comparable to this rendition, which presents selections from the earlier and later periods of Xu’s travels.

OUR TRANSLATION PRIORITIES AND PRACTICES

The purpose of this volume is two-fold. First and foremost, we seek to provide an English translation that represents the broad and varied content in Xu Xiake’s travel diaries. The mountain diaries have attracted the most attention from scholars and translators, and for good reason: Xu’s accounts of his trips to Mount Tiantai, Mount Yandang, Mount Huang (or Yellow Mountain), Mount Lu, and several other notable peaks are chock full of fascinating and, in places, highly literate and emotionally moving “word pictures” of China’s most renowned scenic environments. All of Xu’s mountain diaries are translated in part 1 of this book. Until now, a rich, broad assortment of additional material, most of which dates from Xu Xiake’s trip to the southwest in the late 1630s, has not been available in English translation. Examples of this include Xu’s account of a bloody encounter with murderous river pirates in Hunan, his spelunking expeditions deep into limestone karst caverns in Guangxi, and his observations of, and interactions with, various indigenous border peoples in Yunnan, a remote and sometimes dangerous area that few Chinese travel writers dared to visit during the Ming. Representative selections of this material appear in part 2 of this book. The appendices include material that has never before been translated into English, including Xu’s sequence of landscape poems on Mount Chicken Foot in Yunnan; his critical essay on the origin of the Changjiang; a translation of Chen Hanhui’s commemorative tomb biography of Xu Xiake (the most valuable primary source on his life and travels); a second biography written by the noted late Ming scholar-official Qian Qianyi; a set of verses mourning the death of his close friend, the Buddhist monk Tranquil Hearing; and Pan Lei’s insightful preface to an early hand-copied version of The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake.

Second, we have made every effort to produce an English version of the diaries faithful to the original Chinese text and a rendition that approximates in English—as much as possible—Xu Xiake’s narrative prose style. At the same time, we have endeavored to generate a translation that can be read and enjoyed by general readers and students, including scholars in North America and Europe who study travel writing but do not read Chinese. We hope that China specialists can also benefit from our translations, which provide a rare window through which the modern reader can view, and perhaps even vicariously experience, the challenges and difficulties of traveling around China in the late Ming.

Producing translations always presents difficulties of one sort or another. In preparing this volume, one challenge we have had to face is this: Xu Xiake never explains precisely what he sought to capture in his landscape descriptions, but on at least two occasions in the diaries, he mentions that genuinely outstanding scenery requires recognition of its quality or essence, which he calls “spirit and texture” (shenli), and which the travel writer seeks to “capture” (de) in his prose.⁷² Julian Ward has argued persuasively that in using this term, Xu Xiake sought to describe “both the physical state of the landscape and its metaphysical attractions.”⁷³ We have tried to convey this ideal in our translations.

In our joint effort, we have held as our model the practice of the prominent translator of Chinese and Japanese literature Arthur Waley (1889–1966), as articulated in his A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems: “I have aimed at literal translation, not paraphrase.… Above all, considering imagery to be the soul of poetry, I have avoided either adding images of my own or suppressing those of the original.”⁷⁴ Although Waley here refers to his approach to translating poetry into English, we have made every effort to follow his wise counsel in our translation of Xu Xiake’s prose, the essence of which lies in the language and imagery he uses to narrate travel and movement through space, and in the word pictures he often paints to delineate landscape. Our approach to translation, then, is to not leave out elements and images that appear in the diaries’ original Chinese text and to avoid inserting extraneous elements or images. At the same time, we are acutely aware that when a body of material is worked on by multiple translators, all of whom were trained by different mentors at different institutions and who, throughout their experiences and careers, have developed an approach to the explication of classical Chinese texts and translating them into English, it is inevitable that differences in diction, idiom, and English sentence structure will arise in the translations. The primary responsibility for establishing and preserving a consistent voice throughout the translation thus falls on the volume editor. Although every effort has been made to maintain a consistent prose style in the translations, the discerning reader may detect some (we hope subtle) differences in Xu Xiake’s voice from diary to diary.

To assist the reader in following Xu Xiake’s travel itinerary and gaining additional knowledge and context about the content of diary entries in places they deem appropriate, the translators have inserted brief, explanatory commentary into the main body of the translation. These comments and explanations are typographically distinguished by indentation and smaller type. We realize that this practice briefly interrupts the flow of Xu’s travel narration, but at the same time, it is designed to help readers better understand the background and content of his descriptions.

As mentioned earlier, there are two modern editions of Xu Xiake’s travel diaries: Zhu Huirong’s Xu Xiake youji jiaozhu and Chu Shaotang and Wu Yingshou’s Xu Xiake youji. The editors of these collections have culled lines and passages from various earlier editions and the “lost” diary entries discovered in Beijing in the 1970s and have skillfully and painstakingly woven these recovered lines and passages into their new, modern editions, making the text of the diaries more complete than any previous version. Although recovered lines and passages are either placed in brackets or printed in smaller Chinese characters in these modern editions, we have not highlighted them in any way in our translations. Less clutter and fewer distractions in the translations make them more readable. At the same time, we sought to limit footnote content to information only necessary to clarify technical issues in the original Chinese text or to help the reader better understand the original text and our English translation.

—James M. Hargett

____________________

1. 1  Scholars disagree on the total number of sightseeing trips undertaken by Xu Xiake. Here I follow Wu Qiulong, “Xu Xiake chuyou kaoshu,” 26–31, who convincingly documents twenty-six journeys.

2. 2  YJJZ, 1:4. Chu Shaotang and Wu Yingshou give the same figure. See YJ, 1:5.

3. 3  Zhang Dai 張岱 (ca. 1597–ca. 1679), Collected Works from the Langhuan Library (Langhuan wenji 琅嬛文集) (Beijing: Gugong Chubanshe, 2012), 2.66.

4. 4  Xu Xiake muzhiming, in YJJZ, 2:1432; YJ, 2:1283. Chen Hanhui’s account and the biographies of Wu Guohua (jinshi 1616) and Qian Qianyi (1582–1664) constitute the three primary contemporary sources of Xu Xiake’s life. The biographies by Wu Guohua and Qian Qianyi are found in YJJZ, 2:1430–31 and YJ, 2:1181–82; and YJJZ, 2:1439–41 and YJ, 2:1191–95, respectively. Translations of the Chen and Qian biographies and a short gazetteer biography are included in appendices 2, 3, and 4. Among sources written in modern Chinese, the most useful is Ding Wenjiang’s NP1, which is appended to volume 2 of YJ (following 2:1304 in separate pagination); and Chu Shaotang’s NP2, which appears in Zheng Zu’an and Jiang Minghong, eds., Xu Xiake yu shanshui wenhua, 520–88. The best sources in English on Xu Xiake’s life are both written by Julian Ward: Xu Xiake (1587–1641): The Art of Travel Writing, esp. 38–61; and his entry on “Xu Xiake” in the Berkshire Dictionary of Chinese Biography, 2:1042–54. The brief history of Xu Xiake’s family genealogy that follows is mainly based on chapter 2 in Zhu and Ni, eds., Xuxue gailun: Xu Xiake ji qi Youji yanjiu, 54–60, and Zheng and Jiang, eds., Xu Xiake yu shanshui wenhua, 5–20. Both accounts are written by Wu Qiulong.

5. 5  “One Thousand and Eleven” was the oldest son of Xu Shoucheng, a local official in Wu County, Jiangsu, during the Qingyuan reign (1195–1201) of the Southern Song dynasty. One Thousand and Eleven’s name was Xu Bo. Why he adopted the unusual moniker One Thousand and Eleven is uncertain, but the name may have been devised to preserve his anonymity and thereby avoid government service to the alien Mongol government. Xu Bo’s second son, Xu Tan, was known as Qianshisi, or One Thousand and Fourteen.

6. 6  During the Ming, the area of Jiangnan comprised Jiangsu and Anhui. Wilkinson, Chinese History, 244.

7. 7  DMB, 1:1256–59.

8. 8  Chu-Tsing Li (Li Zhujin 李鑄晉, 1920–2014), “T’ang Yin,” in DMB, 2:1256–59.

9. 9  Xu Yanfang also failed to pass the civil service examination.

10. 10  Decline in the family’s land holdings was probably due to its parsing over multiple generations of male descendants. The precise decline in acreage is unknown.

11. 11  YJJZ, 2:1486; YJ, 2:1245.

12. 12  Dong Qichang’s biography of Xu Youmian is included in YJJZ, 2:1486–88, and YJ, 2:1244–46, respectively. On Dong’s comment about Xu Youmian’s avoidance of visiting government officials, see YJJZ, 2:1486; and YJ, 2:1445.

13. 13  The biographies of Xu Xiake, written by Chen Hanhui and Qian Qianyi, do not mention whether Xu ever took the civil service examinations. Wu Guohua’s biography, however, does include a terse statement on this matter, saying: “When he was young, he took the examinations and failed to pass.” YJJZ, 2:1430; YJ, 2:1181. Chu Shaotang says Xu took and failed the exams in 1602. See NP2, 524. No primary source corroborates either of these claims, but Wu Guohua was Xu Xiake’s brother-in-law, so he would certainly have known about the matter.

14. 14  Huang Daozhou was also a staunch Ming loyalist. Later, he was captured while fighting against Manchu forces and executed.

15. 15  YJJZ, 2:1432; YJ, 2:1184. I use Julian Ward’s translation of this passage in appendix 2.

16. 16  The phrase “a residence of five acres” (wumu zhi zhai 五畝之齋) is drawn from Mencius (Mengzi), 1:3, where the fourth-century philosopher remarks, “Let mulberry trees be planted about the homesteads with their five acres.” Here Li Weizhen seems to be saying that half the family’s land holdings were dedicated to the humble residence of Xu Xiake’s mother. This is hyperbole. The land owned by Xu Xiake’s family undoubtedly exceeded ten acres.

17. 17  YJJZ, 2:1475; YJ, 2:1231. The translation of this passage is heavily indebted to Julian Ward’s rendition in his Xu Xiake, 40.

18. 18  Many modern biographical sources assume that Xu Xiake came from a wealthy, gentry family that could provide complete financial support for his travels. This was probably the case for his earlier, short-term, and less costly trips to destinations in or near Jiangnan. However, his later journey to southwest China, which lasted almost four years, required various strategies on Xu’s part to pay for his long-term travel expenses. These strategies are discussed below in the section “Travel in Late-Ming China.”

19. 19  YJJZ, 2:1433; YJ, 2:1184. Again, I draw on Julian Ward’s translation in appendix 2. The Analects is an essential collection of aphorisms and historical anecdotes attributed to followers of Confucius. The complete text of the line only partially quoted here from Analects 4:19 reads, “When father and mother are still alive, the son should never travel afar and always have a specific destination in mind.” In other words, filial sons should never venture far from home when their parents are still alive so they can return home immediately if their parents are in need.

20. 20  YJJZ, 1:58; YJ, 1:39. For specific identification of the place-names mentioned in this passage, see “A Sightseeing Trip to Mount Song,” this volume.

21. 21  This is a rough estimate. The time to travel upriver on the Changjiang from Jiangsu to Mount Emei in Sichuan would depend on the type of vessel, river conditions, the number of stops made along the way, and other influencing factors.

22. 22  YJJZ, 2:1434; YJ, 2:1186.

23. 23  In high antiquity, China was divided into Nine Regions [Jiuzhou], supposedly established after the sage king Yu the Great (Da Yu) controlled the floods. YJJZ, 2:1487; YJ, 2:1245. Xu Xiake’s mother was called Wang Ruren (1545–1625). Ruren (Model Confucian Dame) was a name given to her by some unnamed source. Her given name (ming) is not documented.

24. 24  DMB, 2:701–10.

25. 25  This chronological organization follows modern Chinese editions of Xu Xiake’s travel diaries, where his oeuvre is organized into two general sections, one containing the mountain diaries (and Xu’s single lake diary) and the other including the accounts of his later trip to the southwest.

26. 26  Originally, a second servant named Wang the Second (Wang’er) accompanied Xu Xiake on his journey to the southwest, but he ran off shortly after the trip began.

27. 27  DMB, 2:1076–79; NP1, 44.

28. 28  YJJZ, 2:1503; JY, 2:1258. For a complete translation of Pan Lei’s preface, see appendix 5. The English translation of these lines is that of Julian Ward.

29. 29  YJJZ, 2:1516–22; YJ, 2:1283–92.

30. 30  YJJZ, 2:1500; YJ, 1:1.

31. 31  For more on Wang Yongji, see part 2, note 1, p. 189.

32. 32  YJJZ, 2:1500; YJ, 1:1. Zhongren was Wang Yongji’s nickname.

33. 33  YJJZ, 2:1501; YJ, 2:1256.

34. 34  Li Ji (courtesy name Jieli) was born to a servant, née Zhou, in the Xu household, with whom Xu Xiake had an affair. When Miss Zhou’s pregnancy became known to the family, she was sold to a local man surnamed Li, who then became Li Ji’s stepfather and raised him. The Xu family stipulated that the boy could never adopt their surname. For additional details, see appendix 1, “Chronology of Xu Xiake,” entry for 1620. Li Ji’s birth year is controversial among Xu Xiake’s biographers. Here I follow Zhou Ningxia, “Xu Xiake jiating beiju ji Li Ji shengnian zai tantao,” 224–25. Based on these birth and death years, Li Ji was the third of Xu Xiake’s four sons: his oldest son, Xu Qi (already mentioned), was born to his first wife, née Xŭ (d. 1618); Xu’s second son, Xu Xian 徐峴 (1619–?), was the progeny of his second wife, née Luo; while the fourth or youngest son, Xu Gou 徐岣[𡵺] (1624–78), was born to a concubine surnamed Jin 金. Each of Xu Xiake’s sons, then, had a different mother.

35. 35  The two sightseeing trips mentioned here are translated in “Travels in Dian 1,” this volume.

36. 36  YJJZ, 2:1508–09; YJ, 1:1.

37. 37  For details of this remarkable discovery, see Zhou Ningxia, “Xu Xiake youji yuanshi chaoben faxian ji zhengli chuban jingguo shuyao.”

38. 38  Xu Xiake’s account of the Xiang River robbery is translated in “Travels in Chu” (diary entry for 7 March 1637), this volume.

39. 39  Xu Shen 許慎 (30–124 CE), Talks on Single-Constituent Characters and Explanations of Composite-Constituent Characters (Shuowen jiezi 說文解字) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1963), 101 shang.

40. 40  Mei and Yu, Zhongguo youji wenxueshi, 300.

41. 41  On the history of these shorter sightseeing accounts and other forms of Chinese travel writing, see Strassberg, Inscribed Landscapes, esp. 1–56, and Hargett, Jade Mountains and Cinnabar Pools, esp. 93–106 and 145–51.

42. 42  Xu’s encounter with the two “unscrupulous monks” from Nanning is translated in “Travels in Western Yue 1” (diary entries for 26 and 27 January), this volume.

43. 43  YJJZ, 1:51; YJ, 1:33.

44. 44  Villagers and old ladies were basking in the sun for warmth and holding up incense burners (tilu) to welcome travelers passing through the village.

45. 45  YJJZ, 1:91; YJ, 1:57. Note that in this passage, Xu Xiake uses the word qi, or “extraordinary,” in the sense of “unusual” or even “strange.”

46. 46  On Wang Shixing, see part 2, note 15, page 405. On the geographical-investigative travel writing of Wang Shixing and Xu Xiake, see Hargett, Jade Mountains and Cinnabar Pools, 157–75.

47. 47  Tracing the Jiang Upstream to Unravel its Source is translated in “Travels in Dian 13,” this volume.

48. 48  YJJZ, 1:379–80; YJ, 1:293–94. I follow the gloss on hongtong 澒洞 (“boundless space”; note that 洞 here reads tóng) in YJJZ, 1:397n21. For a translation of Xu Xiake’s first visit to Seven Stars Cavern, see “Travels in Western Yue 1,” this volume.

49. 49  Natasa Ravbar, “The Earliest Chinese Karstologist Xu Xiake,” Acta Carsologica 32.1 (May 2003): 252–53.

50. 50  Ravbar, “The Earliest Chinese Karstologist Xu Xiake,” 253.

51. 51  YJJZ, 1:59; YJ, 1:40. The expression “wash one’s dusty eyes” (xi chenyan 洗塵眼) is commonly used to mean “provide a lavish dinner to welcome a guest from afar.” However, Xu uses the expression figuratively; he never imagined that the scene at Rocky Roar would “welcome” him so warmly, especially after he had trudged through thick grasses and bushy reeds to get there.

52. 52  The exception to this statement is Julian Ward’s monograph. For a more detailed treatment of the various rhetorical ways Xu Xiake uses language, see Ward, Xu Xiake, esp. 108–25.

53. 53  YJJZ, 1:38; YJ, 1:25.

54. 54  YJJZ, 1:154–55; YJ, 1:103–4. The English translation of this passage is that of Allan H. Barr and is excerpted from his translation in “Travels in Zhe,” in part 2 (diary entry for 6 November 1636), this volume.

55. 55  For previous studies, see Zheng and Jiang, Xu Xiake yu shanshui wenhua, 383–436; Ward, Xu Xiake, chapters 2 and 3.

56. 56  YJJZ, 1:629; YJ, 1:515.

57. 57  YJJZ, 1:604–05; YJ, 1:492–93.

58. 58  YJJZ, 2:770; YJ, 1:644.

59. 59  YJJZ, 1:654; YJ, 1:539.

60. 60  YJJZ, 2:770; YJ, 1:643.

61. 61  YJJZ, 1:627; YJ, 1:513.

62. 62  YJJZ, 2:1327; YJ, 2:1100.

63. 63  YJJZ, 1:335; YJ, 1:258; YJJZ, 2:746; YJ, 1:622.

64. 64  YJJZ, 1:358; YJ, 1:276.

65. 65  YJJZ, 1:646; YJ, 1:531.

66. 66  YJJZ, 1:598; YJ, 1:490.

67. 67  YJJZ, 1:606; YJ, 1:494.

68. 68  YJJZ, 2:881; YJ, 2:725.

69. 69  YJJZ, 2:1273; YJ, 2:1006.

70. 70  Complete bibliographical citations for these and the other translations mentioned below are provided in the selected bibliography.

71. 71  Li Chi, The Travel Diaries of Hsü Hsia-k’o, preface (n.p.).

72. 72  Xu Xiake mentions this term in “A Sightseeing Trip to Mount Wutai” and “A Sightseeing Trip to Mount Heng.” Both diaries are translated in this volume.

73. 73  Ward, Xu Xiake, 97.

74. 74  1919; rpt., Sandwich, MA: Chapman Billies, 1997, 33.