Xu Xiake (, January 5, 1587 – March 8, 1641), born Xu Hongzu (徐弘祖), courtesy name Zhenzhi (振之), was a Chinese explorer, geographer, and travel writer of the Ming dynasty, known best for his famous geographical treatise, and noted for his bravery and humility. He traveled throughout China for more than 30 years, documenting his travels extensively. The records of his travels were compiled posthumously in The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake, and his work translated by Ding Wenjiang.[Needham, Volume 3, 524.] Xu's writing falls under the old Chinese literary category of 'travel record literature' ('youji wenxue'“遊記文學”), which used narrative and prose styles of writing to portray one's travel experiences.[Hargett, 67–69.]
The People's Liberation Army Navy barracks ship Xu Xiake was named after him.
Life
With ancestors from
Jiangxi province, Xu Xiake was born in what is today
Jiangyin (in
Jiangsu province) as Xu Hongzu (宏祖), as the second son of Xu Yu'an (徐豫庵, 1545–1594) and Wang Ruren (王孺人, 1545–1625). It was often said his mother encouraged him to travel and this shaped Xu's predilections. His sobriquet is Zhenzhi (振之).
Xiake was an alternate
sobriquet (別號) given to him by his friend
Chen Jiru (陳繼儒, 1558–1639) and it means "one who is in the sunset clouds". His other friend,
Huang Daozhou (黃道周, 1585–1646), also gave Xu an alternate sobriquet:
Xiayi (霞逸), meaning "untrammelled in the sunset clouds."
On his journeys throughout China, he travelled with a servant called Gu Xing (顧行). He faced many hardships along the way, as he was often dependent on the patronage of local scholars who would help him after he had been robbed of all his belongings.
Travel records
The written work of Xu Xiake's travel records and diaries contained some 404,000 Chinese characters, an enormous work for a single author of his time.
[Hargett, 69.] Xu traveled throughout the provinces of Ming China, often on foot, to write his enormous geographical and
topography treatise, documenting various details of his travels, such as the locations of small gorges, or
mineral beds such as
mica schists.
Xu's work was quite systematic, providing accurate details of measurement, and his work, later translated into modern Chinese by
Ding Wenjiang, reads more like the accounts of a 20th-century field surveyor than an early 17th-century scholar.
In
Guizhou, he made the discovery of the true source of the
Xi Jiang. He also discovered the
Mekong and
Salween River rivers were, in fact, separate drainages with completely separate watersheds.
[Needham, Volume 3, p. 524-525.] Xu made the important realization that the
Jinsha River network and not the Min or
Yalong River formed the true headwaters of the
Yangtze, correcting a mistake in Chinese geography as old as the "Tribute of Yu" compiled by
Confucius in the Classic of History.
Notes
-
Hargett, James M. "Some Preliminary Remarks on the Travel Records of the Song Dynasty (960–1279)," Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews (July 1985): 67–93.
-
Ward, Julian, and Hongzu Xu. 2001. Xu Xiake (1587–1641): the art of travel writing. Richmond England: Curzon. .
-
Needham, Joseph (1959). Science and Civilisation in China: Mathematics and the Sciences of Heaven and Earth. Vol III (Cambridge University Press, 1959).
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