Kunming, at the entrance of Gaoyao Village at the foot of the West Mountain on the shores of Dianchi Lake, there is an ancient courtyard, surrounded by mountains and water, with a high-sea highway passing through the door. A few steps and a tall gatehouse.
Entering the gatehouse, the four characters "Bingyao Nantian" are engraved on the stone wall covered with vines and moss. This place was originally the "Sheng'an Temple" and the "Yang Taishi Temple". When Xu Xiake went to Yunnan to visit Taihua Mountain in Kunming, he once visited Taishi Temple and ate here.
Next to "Sheng'an Temple", adjacent to it is the "Xu Xiake Memorial Hall".
On the gate of the main hall of the memorial hall is a golden plaque with the words "Mountains and Seas Support" written by Mr. Zhao Haonan, a famous calligrapher from Yunnan. In the center of the hall is a bust of Xu Xiake. His profound eyes seem to be looking at the unexplored mountains and rivers in the distance. The large characters "Xu Xiake, a strange man through the ages" on the wall behind the statue make people feel admiration and want to follow the footsteps of this strange man to visit the magnificent rivers and mountains of nature and enjoy the beauty of the world's scenery.
Xu Xiake (January 5, 1587 - March 8, 1641) started traveling at the age of 22, carrying a bamboo stick and straw sandals, using the sky as a blanket and the ground as a bed. “ "When it's dark, he sleeps among trees and rocks; when he's hungry, he eats plants and trees" (Qing scholar Pan Lei said in the preface to "Xu Xiake's Travel Notes"), not afraid of hardships and dangers, He traveled for more than 30 years, exploring the majestic beauty of China's mountains and rivers, and visited 16 provinces and more than 100 cities in most of China. He wrote more than 2 million words of travel notes, and his 600,000-word work "Xu Xiake's Travel Notes" has been compiled by later generations and handed down to the world. From ancient times to the present, who can compare with him? He is truly the most extraordinary person in the world.
Xu Xiake, who was born in a wealthy family in the south of the Yangtze River, was named Xu Hongzu, and his ancestors were all scholars. His great-grandfather Xu Jing and Tang (Yin) Bohu made an appointment to go to Beijing to take the exam together in 1499 AD. After taking the exam, both of them answered the questions well, and Tang Bohu's articles were even more brilliant. However, due to a boast made by Tang Bohu at the wine table, it was rumored that the two of them had "paid questions to take the exam." Public opinion in the capital was uproar, and Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty, Long Yan, was furious and ordered an investigation. Although the case was later found to have no solid evidence and was settled, the two were banned for life because of their involvement. Xu Jing was so angry that he decided not to force his descendants to take the scientific examination when he returned home. He could just "love the examination or not" and just follow his own rules. This became a family motto from now on, and the Xu family had no contact with the official career since then.
Influenced by the aristocratic family culture and his father, Xu Xiake was studious and well-read since he was a child. Although there were many books in his family, he read almost all of them. Xu Zhongzhao, a clan brother, once said that he was "curious by nature and curious about books. There were no books among the guests. Even if he had no money left in his pocket, he also took off his clothes to sell them and returned home. There are now boxes full of boxes, which are several to four treasuries." He was especially fond of the "Di Jing Tu Zhi", and as a young man he set the ambition of "a man facing the blue sea in the morning and living in the sky at dusk".
Xu Xiake was not a good student in the private school class and often did not listen to his teacher's lectures. When my husband lectures, he often reads books such as "The Classic of Mountains and Seas" alone. The private school teacher is often so angry that he blows his beard, but there is nothing he can do. When he was fifteen years old, Xu Xiake failed in the boy's examination and had no intention of becoming famous. Once, the young Xu Xiake went for a leisurely adventure in the mountains alone, and was trapped in the mountains for three days without learning or going home. The family was worried, but his father Xu Youmian was happy, thinking that Xu Xiake had ambitions to travel around the world since he was a child, and there was a haze between his brows. Chen Meigong, a famous scholar in the south of the Yangtze River, said that Xu Hongzu was a guest of Yanxia, so let’s call him Xiake. From then on, Xu Hongzu took the title "Xiake", and the name "Xu Xiake" became well-known to future generations and will be remembered for generations.
After Xu Youmian's death, Xu Xiake kept his mourning for three years. He originally wanted to serve his mother at home. Xu's mother knew that her son had lofty ambitions, thinking that "as a man, he aims in all directions and keeps his home, just like a chicken in a fence or a pony in a cart." , encouraged Xu Xiake that "a man should go to heaven and earth to show his mind", travel far and wide, and see the vastness of heaven and earth. Before Xu Xiake left on his long journey, Xu's mother put on a travel cap sewn by herself. With the encouragement of his mother, Xu Xiake began his traveling career for the next few decades at the age of 22. This trip became unstoppable and created a glorious chapter in the history of human travel. Just imagine, if Xu Xiake had followed the ancient motto "Don't travel far when your parents are around", and without the strong support of his enlightened and open-minded mother, Xu Xiake, an outstanding geographer, traveler and writer, would not have been in the world. Xu's mother must be called "Xu Xiake". For greatness.
At that time, Xu Xiake traveled thousands of miles, ate and slept in the open air, walked well and seldom traveled by car or boat. Although he was accompanied by servants, he often had to carry his own luggage. He was just a "backpacker" and "travel companion". However, it was not easy to be a "backpacker" or "travel companion" at that time. Compared with today's "backpackers" and "travel companions", the travel conditions were many times worse. The hardships of those days are unimaginable for modern people. Many of the places Xu Xiake visited were inaccessible, but the more such places, the more likely Xu Xiake wanted to go.
Xu Xiake's travel was not just for the sake of sightseeing. He not only wanted to understand nature and travel across mountains and rivers, but also to explore the source of mountains and rivers and find their wonders. Xu Xiake may have had a relatively clear purpose of exploration and lofty ambitions from the beginning when he traveled. Otherwise, how could he be able to sleep on the street or in a temple, in a cottage or in a livestock shed? Even if he lit a pond fire and candles, he would insist on writing down what he saw and heard that day. In the past few decades, he had written more than 2 million words and left more than 600,000 words that have been passed down to the world. During the decades of travel, Xu Xiake not only visited places of interest, but also visited places rarely visited by others. He conducted inspections and research, and recorded geographical landscape records of the morphology and trends of mountains, rivers, and rivers. He not only traveled around the mountains and rivers to satisfy his desire to see the wonders of the outside world, but also took the exploration of natural geography as his ultimate goal.
The trip to the southwest was Xu Xiake's last trip, and it also lasted the longest, and his time in Yunnan was longer than in other provinces. Perhaps the landscape and people in Yunnan were uniquely attractive to Xu Xiake, and he formed a close relationship with Yunnan. The fate of solution. On the tenth day of May in the eleventh year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty (1638), Xu Xiake entered Yunnan until he left in the first month of the thirteenth year of Chongzhen (1640). His one year and nine months in Yunnan were his whole life The longest and farthest trip between China and abroad was also the end of his journey. Among the more than 600,000 words of "Xu Xiake's Travels" compiled by later generations, the "Travel Notes of Yunnan" contains more than 250,000 words, which is 40% of the whole book. Yunnan showed many unique features to Xu Xiake, which left a deep impression on Xu Xiake. Starting from Jiangyin, Jiangsu, he ended his life's travels in Tengyue (today's Tengchong), Yunnan due to a serious illness. Xu Xiake traveled almost all over southern China. What he saw, heard and recorded in Yunnan was extensive and rich in content. Later generations left precious geographical expedition records.
When Xu Xiake made his final trip to the southwest, he was already 51 years old, which was over half a century old. According to the average life expectancy of the Chinese at that time, he had entered the old age. The journey was long and the mountain roads were rugged. The family's financial situation seemed to be worse than before. When he reached the Xiangjiang River, He encountered robbers again, and his belongings were robbed and he almost lost his life. He used the rent of his 20 mu of land as collateral and borrowed 20 taels of silver from a fellow villager in Hengyang to move forward. The hospitality and gifts from fellow townsmen and friends can However, although this journey was full of hardships, it was also very fruitful.
Xu Xiake's trip to the southwest seemed to be very interested in the origins of river systems. Through my own on-the-spot investigation and identification, I used irrefutable facts to correct some previous geographical and water system statements. It was not easy given the conditions of investigation and argumentation at that time. He demonstrated that the Jinsha River is the true source of the Yangtze River and corrected the theory of "the Minjiang River guides the source" in "Shang Shu Yu Gong". 300 Many years later, it was not until 1978 that the national expedition team confirmed that the true source of the Yangtze River was the Tuotuo River east of Geladandang, the main peak of the Tanggula Mountains. He inspected the three major water systems of the Yuanjiang, Lancang and Lujiang rivers, corrected the confusion and errors in the records of the Yuanjiang, Lancang and Lujiang water systems in the "Unification of the Ming Dynasty", pointed out that the Yuanjiang River, Lancang River, and Lujiang River flow into the sea independently and are not related to each other. He inspected the north and south Panjiang River and wrote "Panjiang Examination" to find out the source of the Pearl River.
Guangxi, Guizhou and Yunnan are among the regions with the most typical karst landforms in the world. Xu Xiake made an in-depth study of this and wrote in his Travel Notes: The types, distribution and causes of limestone landforms are described and analyzed in detail. The research was the pinnacle of the world at that time, and it was more than a hundred years ahead of Western geographers. In order to investigate karst landforms, Xu Xiake would enter any cave he saw and climb any mountain he knew. He investigated the Xishan Small Stone Forest in Kunming and wrote, "The stone calyx scales, like a blue lotus emerging from the water, scattered all over the ground." He also climbed the little-known Haikou Stone City. It is a pity that the Lunan Stone Forest is famous all over the world, but what people still find difficult to understand is that there is no record of the Lunan Stone Forest in "Xu Xiake's Travel Notes". Such a famous and important karst landform is not far from Kunming, but Xu Xiake did not investigate it? Some people also say that the chapter he recorded was lost and it is impossible to verify it now.
During Xu Xiake's journey to the southwest, an important figure, the monk Jingwen, followed him. Monk Jingwen is a Zen master of Yingfu Temple in Jiangyin. He wishes to enshrine the Lotus Sutra, which he wrote with blood for twenty years, in Jizu Mountain, the holy place of Buddhism in Yunnan. When he learned that Xu Xiake was going to the southwest, he asked Xu Xiake to go with him, and Xu Xiake readily agreed. Jingwen accompanied him all the way, supporting each other in life and death. "At dawn and dusk, we share the same niche, with the sound of Buddhist music and lights and shadows facing each other." Unexpectedly, when the Xiangjiang River was robbed, monk Jingwen stepped forward and was wounded by a knife. After arriving in Nanning, he couldn't afford to fall ill again. He suffered from multiple injuries and stayed in Chongshan Temple. The two met, and Xu Xiake continued to move forward, waiting in silence. I heard about it and asked for Xu Xiake's cloth shoes and tea, which seemed to be a souvenir. Xu Xiake said goodbye to Jingwen and continued to go out for inspection. He returned to Chongshan Temple 75 days later, but could not see Jingwen again. Only then did he know that Jingwen had passed away on the second day after they separated. Xu Xiake was deeply saddened and wrote six poems "Crying and Listening to the Zen Couple" with sincerity to express his condolences. Mr. Wang Guowei once commented on this: "His words are also refreshing, and his descriptions of scenes are also eye-catching. His words blurt out without any pretense." After handling the funeral, Xu Xiake said, In compliance with Jingwen's last wish of "the bones must be bound to Jizu Mountain", he took his remains and blood scriptures and traveled thousands of miles and endured more than 100 days of hardships to reach Jizu Mountain. The blood scriptures were placed in Xitan Temple and the remains were buried in the cemetery. tower. All the monks in Jizu Mountain were deeply shocked by Xu Xiake's great love and righteousness, and asked him to compile an aspiration for Jizu Mountain. After Xu Xiake made a tour and inspection around Jizu Mountain, he went to Lijiang and arrived at Tengyue (Chong), a border area. From Tengyue, he inspected all the way back to Jizu Mountain to fulfill his promise to cultivate his ambition.
After Xu Xiake returned to Jizu Mountain, "after having been in the miasma for a long time, he developed rashes on his head, face, and limbs, with numerous rashes on his skin and skin, and his left ear and left foot often squirmed." Seeing that Xu Xiake's condition was serious, his attendant Gu Pu had evil thoughts in his heart, so he stole the money and goods and abandoned his master and ran away. Xu Xiake really felt that "misfortunes never come singly" and was worried. "After three years away from home, one master and one servant depended on each other. Once abandoned thousands of miles away, how could I bear it!" Although he was angry at Gu's servant's unkindness, he still dissuaded him. There was a monk who was going to chase Gu Pu, so he let Gu Pu go. Soon he became "suddenly ill and unable to walk" and lost the ability and conditions to travel. The torture of physical illness and the heavy mental blow caused by Gu's servant stealing money and escaping made Xu Xiake mentally and physically exhausted and unable to make further inspection tours to the west. In view of Xu Xiake's physical condition, Lijiang local official Mu, a friend he had made in Yunnan, sent additional sliders to escort him back to his hometown. After half a year of ups and downs, Xu Xiake returned to his hometown Jiangyin and passed away soon after. There is a group of sculptures in the memorial hall, showing the scene where Mu Zeng bid farewell to Xu Xiake.
Xu Xiake was not afraid of hardships and obstacles, traveled through mountains and rivers, conducted in-depth on-the-spot investigations, distinguished the false while preserving the true, in order to reach correct conclusions. His scientific and exploratory spirit, Mao Zedong Zeng was so impressed that there was a handwritten banner of Mao Zedong hanging in the memorial hall: "I really want to learn from Xu Xiake - Mao Zedong."
On January 28, 1958, Mao Zedong said in his "Speech at the Supreme State Council": "The Jiangsu man in the Ming Dynasty who wrote "Xu Xiake's Travels" had no official spirit. He ran away so much. Duo Lu found out that the Jinsha River is the source of the Yangtze River. This is what the scriptures say. He said it was wrong. He said it was the Jinsha River that guided the river. "I don't think he is running around." Can it be written so well? This is not only a scientific work, but also a literary work."
On April 5, 1959, Mao Zedong stated one of his wishes at the Seventh Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China held in Shanghai: "If possible, I will travel to the Yellow River and the Yangtze River, and travel along the river from the mouth of the Yellow River. Go up. Get a group of people, geologists, biologists, and writers, who are only allowed to ride horses, not cars. Riding horses is really good for your health. Go all the way to the Kunlun Mountains, then to the Tongtian River in Zhu Bajie, and cross the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. Then go down the river, from Jinsha River to Chongming Island. I have this ambition...I really want to learn from Xu Xiake. Xu Xiake was from Jiangyin, Jiangsu during the Chongzhen period in the late Ming Dynasty. Yangtze River. You can read "Xu Xiake's Travels".
To this end, Mao Zedong also arranged for some preparations before the inspection. Later, due to physical illness and changes in the international situation, the inspection was shelved.
On March 30, 2011, the State Council executive meeting passed a resolution to designate May 19, the opening date of "Xu Xiake's Travels" as "China Tourism Day".
"Peach blossoms and flowing water never leave the human world, and cloud shadows and moss marks form their own years." Xu Xiake visited Yunnan and praised the mountains and rivers of Yunnan. The words of praise he wrote when he visited Heshang Cave in Fumin County are also It becomes a true portrayal of the beautiful scenery of colorful Yunnan.
Xu Xiake traveled to Yunnan from Guizhou and entered the scenic spot of "Southern Yunnan". The opening chapter in "Xu Xiake's Travels·Dian Travel Diary" is "Travel to Taihua Mountain". Judging from the time, it cannot be seen in other chapters of the travel diary. Travel notes of the 87 days before arriving in Kunming. Whether those travel notes were destroyed in the fire of the mutiny after he returned to his hometown, it is a pity that it is no longer known where he visited and what he experienced in those days.
Kunming is home to the beautiful Dianchi Lake with rippling blue waves. On the west bank of Dianchi Lake, green peaks such as Biji Mountain, Taihua Mountain, Huating Mountain, and Luohan Mountain are arranged along the lake. Because they are located in the west of the lake, they are also collectively called the West Mountains. The names of the peaks are gradually less known. Taihua Mountain is one of the peaks of the Western Mountains. Xu Xiake crossed from Caohai back then, "Leaving the provincial capital, he got off the boat two miles southwest, and there was water on both sides of the bank. Ten miles of fields were exhausted, and the swamp was full of reeds. The boat sailed among the deep green, and it was no longer known as Dianchi Lake. The huge current is the sea of grass." On this day, Xu Xiake and his wife went up to the Western Mountains and traveled to all the peaks. This is recorded in detail in "Taihua Mountain Travel Notes".
In 2007 the Kunming Municipal Government held a ceremony to commemorate the 420th birthday of the outstanding geographer, tourist, writer and "traveling saint" Xu Xiake on On the bank of Dianchi Lake in Xishan, next to the "Sheng'an Temple" The "Xu Xiake Memorial Hall" was built on the site of the original Puxian Temple to commemorate this "wonderful man through the ages" and remember his contribution to Yunnan has made extraordinary contributions to tourism and geography, and left precious wealth to future generations.
Xu Xiake's life-long travel expedition ended in Yunnan due to illness. He came from Jiangyin and then arrived in Yunnan.