Conventions

TRANSLATIONS AND TEXTUAL REFERENCES

The contributors/translators responsible for portions of the introduction and translated diaries are identified at the end of their respective sections. For readers who wish to consult the original Chinese text as they read the translations, an unnumbered note at the beginning of each diary provides the romanized (Hanyu Pinyin) diary title, volume, and page numbers keyed to the modern editions of Xu Xiake youji edited by Zhu Huirong (2017 rev. ed., abbreviated YJJZ), and Chu Shaotang and Wu Yingshou (2007 rev. ed., abbreviated YJ). Thus, the reference “YJJZ, 1:1–8” refers to the Zhu Huirong text, printed in simplified characters, volume 1, pages 1–8; “YJ, 2:757–58,” refers to the Chu Shaotang and Wu Yingshou edition, printed in traditional, or full-form characters, volume 2, pages 757–58. Occasionally, we also gloss Xu Xiake’s note on the geographical location of his travel destination.

NOTES

Notes provide information to help readers understand special terms, lines, and passages in the translations. They also identify and briefly explain references or allusions to earlier historical events or literary texts and identify and resolve, when possible, textual issues, such as missing Chinese characters in the original text or misprints in modern editions of the diaries, variant readings, and related matters. Generally, we do not cite secondary sources in the notes. Secondary sources on Xu Xiake and his travels are included in the selected bibliography.

CHINESE CHARACTERS AND ROMANIZATION

Traditional or full-form Chinese characters (fantizi) are used throughout this book. The general glossary-index includes Chinese characters for all personal names, titles of works, technical terms, and unique vocabulary. The place-name glossary-index includes all place-names mentioned in the introduction, translations, appendices, and notes. Chinese place-names consisting of two syllables are romanized, in Hanyu Pinyin, as follows: Mount Lu [廬山] is rendered as “Lushan,” “Yellow Peak” [黃峰] is rendered as “Huangfeng,” and so on. Place-names consisting of three or more syllables are romanized as follows: Mount Wutai [五臺山]is rendered as “Wutai Shan,” Longevity Mountain’s Blessed Realm [壽山福地] is rendered as “Shoushan Fudi,” and so on.

NAMES OF PEOPLE

Keeping track of people’s names can be challenging for readers unfamiliar with the Chinese language. This is because it is not uncommon for the same person to be identified by two or more alternate names. In addition to a family or surname (xing) and given name (ming; bestowed shortly after birth), educated men like Xu Xiake also had a courtesy name (zi; usually given to males when they came of age) and a nickname (hao). Xu’s given name was Hongzu; his courtesy name was Zhenzhi. However, he is much better known by his nickname, Xiake (Traveler in Sunglow Clouds), given to him by his friend Chen Jiru (1558–1639), a literary celebrity and cultural icon of the Ming dynasty. To avoid confusion, we have tried, as much as possible, to refer to individuals by one name, usually their family name and given name. Contrary to standard sinological practice, however, we translate the names of Buddhist monks into English. In our view, this practice makes it easier to keep track of names while making the translations more reader-friendly. For example, the translated name of Xu Xiake’s Buddhist friend and traveling companion Jingwen (d. 1637) is Tranquil Hearing.

GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS AND THEIR CIVIL SERVICE EXAMINATION RANKS

Numerous government officials, historical figures, and contemporaries of Xu Xiake are mentioned in the diaries. Aside from their names, officials are sometimes identified by the designation of the highest civil service examination they have passed, followed by the year they succeeded. There were three levels of examinations: local, provincial, and national. Successful exam candidates at the local level were called shengyuan (lit., “novice functionaries”) or xiucai (lit., “budding talents”); in English, men who passed local exams are also sometimes called “licentiate(s).” Those who pass the provincial-level triennial exam are called juren (lit., “elevated candidates”). Only students who passed the provincial-level examination could sit for the prestigious national-level exams (sometimes called the “metropolitan exam” in English), administered in the capital once every three years. Those who passed it were designated jinshi, or “advanced scholars,” sometimes translated as “metropolitan graduates.” So a reference in the diaries such as “Wang Qiyuan, a jinshi of the renwu year” means Wang Qiyuan passed the jinshi, or “advanced scholar” exam in the renwu year on the Chinese calendar. When references like this appear in the translations, we add the corresponding Western date, in this case 1622, in parentheses. On the counting system that generated two-character references for years, such as renwu, see the section below on the Chinese sexagesimal cycle.

PRONOUNS

Pronouns are used only sparingly in Classical Chinese, and Xu Xiake follows this practice in his diaries. When he does employ a pronoun, it is usually the singular, first-person yu余, or “I.” Throughout his many journeys, however, he rarely traveled alone. On many occasions, he had relatives, such as uncles and cousins, accompanying him. He also toured with servants and Buddhist friends like Tranquil Hearing and often engaged the services of local guides. Of course, first-person journey narration in English requires pronouns. However, we try to use them sparingly in our translations. Doing so helps to suggest Xu Xiake’s travel narrative prose style. However, we still need pronouns, which begs the question: When the first-person “I” is not present in a passage, should we use singular “I” or plural “we”? Our rule of thumb is to use “I” as our default first-person pronoun in the translations. We employ the plural pronoun “we” only when Xu Xiake directly engages in an activity or conversation with another person or persons.

MAPS

Map 1 provides an overview of the significant places that Xu Xiake visited during his travels, including those featured in maps 2–27, which accompany the diaries translated here. Xu often mentions and describes places, especially mountains, that he viewed from a distance but did not reach in his travels. Key locations he passed or visited, and whose locations we have confirmed, are plotted on the maps. Other place-names are sometimes added as locators to provide context and help orient the reader.

PLACE-NAMES

The diaries are replete with place-names. During the Ming dynasty, the primary divisions of government units below the provincial (sheng) level, in descending administrative order, were fu, zhou, and xian. In translating these administrative units into English, we follow the standard practice and render them prefecture, subprefecture, and county, respectively. Occasionally, Xu refers to a “commandery” (jun). Although commanderies were abolished in China in the early Tang dynasty, the term continued to be used as an unofficial reference to fu and zhou, or prefectures and subprefectures. The corresponding modern locations of Ming dynasty government administration units Xu Xiake passed or visited are provided on their first occurrence. However, when he mentions the name of a prefecture, subprefecture, or county he did not pass through or visit, its current location is not identified. In the notes, modern administrative divisions in China, such as shi (cities), qu (areas), xian (counties), and zhen (towns), are identified in Hanyu Pinyin (e.g., Nanjing Shi, Huangyan Qu, Xiuning Xian, Wangkuai Zhen, and so on). Ming place-names of smaller geographic units are more challenging to locate precisely, so readers are advised to consult the maps. The place-name glossary-index includes all place-names mentioned in the introduction, translations, and notes.

GOVERNMENT OFFICE TITLES

In most cases, we follow the English translations for government offices, office titles, and related terms in Charles O. Hucker’s A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. We have also consulted Zhang Ying et al., eds., Chinese-English Dictionary of Ming Government Official Titles.¹ Only titles that are unusual in English or refer to specific persons (“Shen, Investigating Censor”) are capitalized, to clarify that they are titles.

THE SEXAGESIMAL CYCLE

The sexagesimal cycle was a key counting system in dynastic China. In Xu Xiake’s travel diaries, it is used extensively to identify days and years. The sixty components in the cycle are formed by combining elements from two sets of counters called “stems” (gan) and “branches” (zhi), which combine in a fixed sequence of pairs that repeat after sixty years (for details, see Wilkinson, Chinese History, 548). In Xu’s travel accounts, such dates often appear at the beginning of diary entries. For instance, the opening date in “A Sightseeing Trip to Mount Tiantai” is identified as a guichou year, corresponding to 1613 on the Western calendar.

LUNAR CALENDAR TO WESTERN CALENDAR CONVERSION

Traditionally, the Chinese followed a lunisolar calendar based on astronomical observations of the sun’s longitude and the moon’s phases. Often, this calendar is identified as China’s “lunar calendar.” Year, month, and day references in Xu Xiake’s diaries correspond with this calendar. In parentheses, we provide conversions of Xu Xiake’s lunisolar calendar references to Western (or Gregorian) calendrical dates. Our date conversions are based on Xue Zhongsan and Ouyang Yi’s Liangqian nian Zhong-Xi li duizhao biao兩千年中西曆對照表 (A Sino-Western Calendar for Two Thousand Years: 1–2000

DAYTIME AND NIGHTTIME REFERENCES

Daytime periods or hours are indicated in the diaries by general terms such as “dawn” (chen), “midday” (zhongwu), “afternoon” (wuhou), “sunset” (mu), and so on. Only rarely does Xu refer to specific “double hours” during the daylight hours (when he does, we add a note). As for the division of time during the nighttime hours, Xu uses the traditional double-hour “watches” (geng) system. In cities and towns, based on calendars and timetables promulgated by the government, local officials supervised the tolling of bells or beating of drums to announce daytime and nighttime “double hours.” In villages, night watchmen often announced such time changes. Nighttime divisions break down as follows: first watch (7:00–9:00 p.m.), second watch (9:00–11:00 p.m.), third watch (11:00 p.m.– 1:00 a.m.), fourth watch (1:00–3:00 a.m.), and fifth watch (3:00–5:00 a.m.). In the diaries, sometimes references are made to “first drum,” “second drum,” and so on. These “drums” (gu) correlate with the same double-hour divisions as the “watches.” For more information on telling time in premodern China, see Wilkinson, Chinese History, 587–92.

LINEAR AND AREA MEASURES

There are no precise, accurate English terms for Chinese linear and area measures, so the numbers below should be regarded as approximations. These are the most common measures mentioned in the diaries.

UNCERTAIN STATEMENTS MADE WITH A MEASURE OF CONFIDENCE

Quite often, in the original Chinese text of the diaries, Xu Xiake will begin a sentence with the initial grammatical particle gai, which we usually translate as “presumably.” The final particle, yun, often appears at the end of a declarative sentence (with or without having an initial gai), which means something like “or so it is said” or “or so I was told.” The repetition of these English terms and phrases in the translations may distract some readers. However, we must remember that in most cases, Xu is describing places he had never been to before. The information he derived from the travel accounts and gazetteers he carried with him on the road was not always accurate, nor were the reports he received from guides and strangers he met during his travels. So when he is reasonably—but not entirely—sure his information is correct, he alerts readers using gai and/or yun.

ELLIPSIS

We often use ellipses (…) to indicate lines or sections in the original Chinese text that have not been translated because we have deemed them extraneous or nonessential to the described activity or place. This makes the translated text more concise and enhances readability.

SPECIAL TERMS

CHANGJIANG

People outside China have called China’s longest waterway the Yangzi (sometimes spelled Yangtze or Yangtse) for centuries. This practice continues today. In fact, “Yangzi” refers only to a short stretch of the river in Yangzhou, Jiangsu. In our view, using “Yangzi” as a synecdoche for the river is misguided. In ancient China, it was called “the Jiang” (“the River”). Today, in China, it is universally called the Changjiang (Great River). We refer to this great waterway as “the Changjiang.”

TRANSCENDENT(S)

The Chinese term xian has different meanings depending on context, whether philosophical, religious, or mythological. In Western language works on China, xian is variously translated as “immortal,” “fairy,” “wizard,” “genie,” and “hermit,” to name just five examples. We prefer, as others have done before us, to translate xian as “transcendent,” referring to human beings who have been able to transcend the mortal world through alchemy, meditation, physical exercises, or some other practice and thereby reach a higher state of existence that leads to extended life or even immortality.

BUILDINGS AND MANMADE STRUCTURES

Precise English equivalents for types of Chinese buildings and structures often are lacking. One prominent example is the term lou, which often appears in the diaries and generally refers to a building with two or more stories. Following the practice of some China scholars before us, we translate lou as “loft,” though we readily admit that this rendition is far from ideal. However, it is less cumbersome than a “multistoried building.” In the diaries, lou sometimes refers to a lodge, inn, or tower and is translated accordingly. Xu Xiake’s travel accounts also include numerous related terms, such as ting (“pavilion,” a roofed structure supported by vertical beams with no walls, usually built for viewing scenic sights), ge (“belvedere,” an attractive, two-storied building, usually with an open-air lookout or terrace on the second floor, with a door and windows only in the front), xuan (“veranda,” an open-air lookout or terrace that has windows), tai (“terrace,” an elevated, flat surface built of earth or one covered with brick used for gazing into the distance; also, an elevated and flat natural land feature), and gong (“palace,” usually a Daoist abbey, sometimes also called guan). Buddhist monasteries are generally called si or yuan (“cloisters”).

ROCKY BAMBOO SHOOTS

One of Xu Xiake’s favorite descriptive terms is shisun, or “rocky bamboo shoot(s).” He often uses this term to describe elongated and slender landforms shaped like a bamboo shoot, such as stalactites and stalagmites in limestone karst caverns (for which, see below) or vertical columns of rock that emerge from land or bodies of water, usually near limestone cliffs.

PLUMS

Sometimes, it is not easy to distinguish in English Chinese trees and fruits that are botanically related, such as li and mei, which are mentioned numerous times in Xu Xiake’s diaries. Li refers to plums with thin pulp (Prunus salicina); mei is a variety of apricot (Prunus mume) but is often translated as “plum” by Western scholars. Because the general reader would probably find distinguishing these names cumbersome and confusing, we follow the usual practice and translate both li and mei as “plum.”

THE FAMILY NAME XU

On several occasions in the diaries, we encounter persons whose family name is spelled “Xu” in Hanyu Pinyin. Some of these people are relatives of Xu Xiake’s or are persons who share the same surname, written 徐 and, in modern Chinese, pronounced in the second tone: Xú. But we occasionally encounter persons whose family name is also spelled “Xu” but written with a different Chinese character: 許 (in modern Chinese, pronounced in the third tone: Xŭ). This is potentially confusing, so we spell Xu Xiake’s surname “Xu,” but for people surnamed 許, we include the tone mark with their family name: “Xŭ.”

CLIFFS, CRAGS, AND MOUNTAIN CAVES

Since Xu Xiake was fond of visiting scenic highland locations, it is no surprise that his diaries—especially his accounts of visits to famous mountains—are loaded with vocabulary related to landforms, that is, the physical features of the earth’s surface formed through natural processes such as tectonic activity, erosion, weathering, and so on. Two vocabulary items relating to mountain environments that appear regularly in the diaries are yan and ya. These terms can and do refer to different geological sites. For instance, yan can indicate a cliff (a steep, vertical, or overhanging face of rock), a crag (a high mass of rock that juts out from the landforms around it), or a precipice (a cliff or rockface). During his extended visit to Guangxi in 1637 and 1638, Xu Xiake sometimes used yan when referring to that region’s famous above-ground vertical limestone spires. However, on other occasions, yan denotes a sizeable open cave on a mountain. As for ya, it is also used to identify a cliff, steep bank, or precipice beneath an overhanging cliff. Xu Xiake does not distinguish these and other related geographical terms with strict semantic precision, so his specific meaning is not always readily apparent. Another sometimes indefinite term is jian, usually translated as “stream,” “mountain stream,” or “mountain brook.” However, it can refer to a raging mountain torrent, but in other contexts, it indicates a mountain ravine. In translating such terms, we rely on context to help guide us to the most appropriate, corresponding English word. When context does not help, we usually fall back on generic meanings. In the cases of yan and ya, the generic meaning we employ is “cliff.” For jian, we use “mountain stream” or “stream” for short.

KARST CAVERNS

Aside from scenic highland locations, Xu Xiake was equally fond of exploring subterranean passageways, especially those infrequently visited by sightseers. He was keenly interested in surveying karst caverns (rongdong). “Karst” denotes a particular underground cavern formed by rock, primarily limestone. Over time, the limestone is dissolved in water, creating various, sometimes unusual, shapes and configurations. Stalactites and stalagmites—Xu Xiake’s “rocky bamboo shoots”—along with deep sinkholes, dark grottoes, and a host of different rock formations, are created by this process. In the translations, these landforms are almost always named or identified as dong, or “caverns.” When Xu Xiake refers to or describes a subterranean or interior mountain passageway that is not a karst landform, even if its name includes the word dong, these are translated as “cave.” Again, in making our translations, we use context to help guide us to the most appropriate, corresponding English word. For instance, during his extended trip to the southwest between 1636 and 1640, almost all of the hundreds of cave complexes Xu visited in Guangxi and Yunnan were karst caverns, thus making identification much easier. Sometimes, he uses xue, a generic word for any opening in the ground, which we translate as a “cave.” Usually, when Xu refers to a cave, it is dry and lacks a water source. Karst caverns, however, always have water sources.

—James M. Hargett

XU XIAKE IN HISTORICAL AND CONTEMPORARY TRAVEL

Xu Xiake is not just a historical figure but a revered national hero in contemporary China. His influence is deeply ingrained in the culture, with a troop training ship in the Chinese Navy bearing his name and a set of postage stamps issued in 1987 to commemorate the four-hundredth anniversary of his birth. His legacy has transcended time, inspiring television programs like China in the Classics—The Travels of Xu Xiake and serving as a muse for novels about dynastic China written in English, such as Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart (New York: Minotaur Books, 2016). The significance of the day of his first recorded journey, which began on May 19, 1613, is now officially celebrated annually as National Tourism Day in China. His statues appear at major sites he visited, which sometimes also host a Xu Xiake memorial hall/museum (jinianguan). The China Travel Service vigorously promotes tourism at these landmarks. Printed travel guides are also available to help modern sightseers locate the sites Xu visited.

Despite the time and expense of such expeditions, dedicated efforts have been made to revisit sites noted in Xu’s diaries. In 2006, for example, a Nanning newspaper had reporters fan out across Guangxi to locate places he had visited and take stock of their current appearance. Some sites they found largely intact, while others suffered severe damage. Yet others—such as the Exalted Benevolence Monastery in Nanning (Chongshan Si), where Xu’s monk companion Tranquil Hearing died—had disappeared practically without a trace. Some Western travel writers have followed portions of his itineraries and visited selected, notable places described in the diaries. Tony Perrottet, writing about his trip to Lijiang, Yunnan, in Smithsonian Magazine, described Xu as “China’s Patron Saint of Tourism” and the Ming dynasty’s “Indiana Jones.”³ Other enthusiasts have called him a “Zen backpacker” and China’s “first travel blogger.” Although such monikers attract media attention, they detract from the serious purpose behind Xu’s journeys and the proto-scientific nature of many of his investigations.

The Center for Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg in Germany has published the most useful digital mapping work on Xu Xiake’s itineraries.⁴ The maps Nanny Kim and her colleagues produced in Heidelberg present valuable reconstructions of sections of Xu Xiake’s southwest diaries relevant to identifying and geolocating mining sites in Yunnan. Perhaps one day, Xu Xiake’s mountain and provincial travel itineraries will be reconstructed online.

—Allan H. Barr, Julian Ward, and James M. Hargett

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1. 1  University of California Irvine Libraries, eScholarship open access publications, https:// escholarship .org /uc /item /2bz3v185 .

2. 2  Yuk Tung Liu, “Conversion between Western and Chinese Calendar (722 BCE– 2200 CE),” https:// ytliu0 .github .io /ChineseCalendar .

3. 3  Smithsonian Magazine, “Retracing the Footsteps of China’s Patron Saint of Tourism,” https:// www .smithsonianmag .com /travel /retracing -footsteps -china -patron -saint -tourism -180954581 .

4. 4  See Kim’s article “Xu Xiake’s Yunnan Journey and the Expansion of Mining in the Far Southwest during the Ming,” https:// www .persee .fr /doc /etchi _0755 -5857 _2020 _num _39 _1 _1682 .