Xu Xiake

Xu Xiake (1587-1641): geographer of the Ming Dynasty. His name was Hongzu, his courtesy name was Zhenzhi, and his name was Xiake. A native of Jiangyin (now Jiangyin, Jiangsu), Nanzhili. He was eager to learn when he was young, and he was well-read in maps, classics and geographical records. Because of the political darkness in the late Ming Dynasty, he was unwilling to become an official and concentrated on traveling. The footprints reached from Yan and Jin in the north to Yunnan, Guizhou, and Guangdong and Guangxi in the south. They were prepared to experience hardships and dangers during the journey. His observations were recorded on a daily basis. After his death, it was compiled into "Xu Xiake's Travels" by Ji Mengliang and others. "Xu Xiake's Travels" mainly records Xu Xiake's travel observations from 1613 to 1639 based on his diary. It records geography, hydrology, geology, plants and other phenomena in detail, opening a new direction for systematic observation and description of nature in Chinese geography. It provides a lot of rare information on the geography of the southwest border area. The description of limestone landforms is more than a century earlier than that of Europeans. The writing is vivid and the description is precise. It is also a very good literary work.