Chapter 57 Section 8: Xu Xiake and "Xu Xiake's Travel Notes"

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, a famous geographer Xu Xiake also appeared in our country.His name was Hongzu, his courtesy name was Zhenzhi, and Xiake was his alias. He was born in 1587 and died in 1641. He was born in Jiangyin, South Zhili (now Jiangyin, Jiangsu).Since he was a child, he was "very curious about books" and loved to travel. He "has only dreamed of clouds and mountains in his life", and he is determined to "ask strange things about famous mountains and rivers".From the age of 22 to the time when he returned home from Yunnan with illness at the age of 54, he traveled almost every year for 30 years, and visited Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Anhui, Shandong, Hebei, Beijing, Hubei, Henan, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places, with footprints covering most of China.It is a work written in the diary style during his travels.This travel note is full of his deep affection for the strange mountains and rivers. It was written by him with accurate and vivid brushwork. It is famous for its true feelings, true scenery, true meaning, and true facts. Characters, big characters, strange characters", is a famous literary and geographical work.

Its geographical value is prominently reflected in its records and discussions of karst landforms. Many of the areas that Xu Xiake traveled and inspected belonged to karst landform areas, especially Xiangxi, Guangxi, Guizhou, and Yunnan.Wherever he went, he carefully observed the landform features of these areas, and described them in detail in his travel notes.According to statistics, he described 22 items of surface karst landforms, most of which were first observed and described by him, and compared the differences in landforms in different regions, and some of them also discussed their causes.Its content includes stone buds, melting ditches, fissures, troughs, basins, valleys, natural bridges, peak forests, isolated peaks, etc.At the same time, there are 357 caves described in the book, including 288 limestone caves. , sound, and the cause of caves.Whether in terms of depth or breadth, these accounts far surpassed those of the predecessors, and many of them were even more consistent with the explanations of modern science.It can be said that Xu Xiake is a pioneer in the systematic study of karst geography in China, and also the earliest karst scientist and speleologist in the world.It was not until the 1850s in the West that more than karstology works appeared.