A Record of the Routes on Mount Tai is a gazetteer of Mount Tai written by Qing dynasty scholar Nie Qin, based on his own fieldwork. Nie Qin, whose courtesy name was Jian Guang, lived near Mount Tai for many years. Over more than three decades, he visited its mountains, rivers, and historic sites, checked classical texts, and measured roads. As a result, he organized the book around routes and recorded in great detail the contours of Mount Tai, the distribution of its subsidiary ridges, climbing paths, the courses of its waterways, and the temples and shrines along the way. In addition to listing the locations and distances of scenic sites, the book examines ancient steles, ruins, and old roads one by one, allowing readers to feel as though they are walking through the mountains with the author and to grasp the network of routes, the layout of the scenery, and the region’s history. Carefully structured and rigorously researched, it is an important source for the study of Mount Tai’s geography, transport, history, and culture. It was highly regarded by Qing scholars, and Yao Nai praised it in his preface.
