The Ming Dynasty calligrapher Dong Qichang wrote such a sentence in his "Essay on Painting the Zen Room - Volume II": "Read ten thousand books, travel thousands of miles, remove the dust in your chest, and camp in the natural hills and ravines." And Du Fu, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, also issued an exclamation that "reading books breaks through ten thousand volumes, and writing is like a god". For the ancients, walking the world was a good way to cultivate sentiments, and it was also very hone in personal will. However, not many people could do this in ancient times, even in modern times with convenient transportation, which is also a thing that is out of reach.
Walking in the mountains and rivers is a temptation for both the ancients and the contemporary, but because there are too many things that people need to worry about, whether ancient or modern, few people can really do it to abandon everything and go to the mountains and rivers without doing anything in their lives. Even Li Bai, a great poet of the Tang Dynasty, although he did not work for a few days in his life and spent most of his time in the mountains and rivers, he has also been trying to realize his political ambitions. Otherwise, he would not have gone all the way to join Li Xuan's rebellion, and he would have been implicated and assigned a night lang for this reason.
However, in the history of thousands of years in ancient times, there really appeared a strange person who did nothing all his life and patronized the mountains and rivers, and this person was Xu Xiake, who lived in the same era as Dong Qichang.
Who is Xu Xiake? Today, hundreds of years later, he is also a well-known person, especially his sentence "The return of the Five Mountains does not look at the mountains, and the return of the Huangshan Mountains does not look at the Mountains", which makes the Huangshan Mountains have the reputation of a wonderland on earth.
So, in the ancient times when traffic was not developed, how did Xu Xiake travel all over the world? And the journey costs a lot, how did he achieve a lifetime without work, but also a good swim in the mountains? More importantly, Xu Xiake has been playing in the world for 30 years, and he has not worked for a day in his life, so what has he done in his life? Is it just a sightseeing tour? Let's talk about these issues.
The road conditions in ancient times were very poor, especially during the Ming Dynasty, because the population at that time was still relatively sparse, and many places were still in an undeveloped state of wilderness. And where Xu Xiake went, most of them were inaccessible places, not to mention riding a horse, and even climbing up was very difficult. In this case, I had to admire Xu Xiake's willpower, and he traveled all over the world by relying on two feet. Because of the long trek, Xu Xiake has been plagued by foot diseases since he was middle-aged, but he has not flinched and has insisted on traveling the world until a year before his death, when he returned home because the foot disease was too serious.
So, Xu Xiake has not worked all his life, where does his money for sightseeing come from? This problem is actually very simple, because Xu Xiake, like Li Bai, has a huge family behind them as a dependency. Li Bai's father was a businessman, and his two wives were both granddaughters of the prime minister, both of whom were famous bridesmaids, so Li Bai naturally did not lack money. And Xu Xiake's family is also a huge wealth in Jiangyin, the family assets are quite abundant, and his wife is also from a rich family, so naturally there is no need to worry about the cost of the journey.
In addition, Li Bai and Xu Xiake have one thing in common, the reason why they can walk the world unimpeded is because they both have a lot of fans all over the country. For example, Li Bai almost every time he goes to a place, he is received by fans, not only taking him on a sightseeing tour, but also serving him with good wine and good food, and giving him a large amount of money when he leaves. For example, there was a man named Wang Lun, when he sent Li Bai away, he not only sent Li Bai a large amount of silk silk, but also gave Li Bai 8 horses. Li Bai also wrote a poem to commemorate the friendship between the two, which is the famous "Gift to Wang Lun". Similarly, Xu Xiake has traveled the world all over the world in her life and met many fans, and they have also given a lot of support to Xu Xiake's travel career.
Some people may ask again, Xu Xiake has not done anything in his life, he has patronized the mountains and rivers, what is the point of doing so? In fact, Xu Xiake is not just a sightseeing tour, he corrected many of the mistakes of the ancients in geography in the process of traveling the world. For example, through his own experience, he concluded that the Jinsha River was the source of the Yangtze River, and this discovery was not further confirmed to the Tuotuo River until 1978. In addition, he also identified the source of many waterways such as the Qiantang River, the Daying River, and the Lancang River, and corrected the errors in the records of these water systems in the "Chronicle of the Unification of the Great Ming Dynasty".
Xu Xiake not only had great achievements in geographical discovery, but also had high achievements in literature, leaving behind many popular poems. Of course, Xu Xiake's greatest achievement lies in the "Travels of Xu Xiake" that he left behind, which is not only a precious document of ancient geography, but also a wonderfully conceived travel literature.
Therefore, don't look at Xu Xiake's lifelong sightseeing, his life's achievements can be said to be far more than others in the same period. For example, Li Bai's sightseeing in the mountains and rivers does not prevent him from becoming a world-famous poetry immortal. And Xu Xiake's life of sightseeing and sightseeing did not prevent him from becoming a famous geographer, traveler and literary scholar in ancient times. From this point of view, the ancient people's life motto of reading thousands of books and walking thousands of miles, although difficult to achieve, is still very reasonable.