The small friends who were addicted to martial arts at that time had more or less a hazy interest in a person, that is, "Xu Xiake".
When I first heard "Xu Xiake's Travels", many people thought it was a martial arts novel, thinking about what this chivalrous guest surnamed Xu came from and why he was so famous, until he saw the Ming Dynasty geographer Xu Xiake in the language book, and suddenly realized.
After in-depth understanding, I found that this travelogue can really be read as a martial arts novel, and Xu Xiake is definitely a chivalrous guest.
"Traveler Xu Xiake" comic strip
Regarding xia, from the earliest suggestion of the pre-Qin legalists that "Confucianism is chaotic with the law, and chivalry is forbidden by force", to the 80s and 90s of the last century, the Jin Guliang martial arts novels swept the north and south of the river, after more than 2,000 years of development, they have been given a rich spiritual interpretation, but they can never avoid martial arts, let's first look at Xu Xiake's "force value".
01 Hero's Bravery
Although Xu Xiake does not have the kind of worldly divine skills in martial arts novels, he is by no means a thin and weak literati, at least he is physically strong, has a super ability to survive in the wilderness, and his strength should be a fight with The Bei Ye in "Survival in the Wilderness", how can he see it?
Survival in the Wilderness bell
According to the "Travels of Xu Xia" and the "Biography of Xu Xia" written by the early Qing Dynasty scholar Qian Qianyi, he usually only took a bamboo stick and a cover when he went out on a trip, and at most had a torch and a few hemp ropes, neither clothes nor food, and could endure hunger for many days and eat whatever he encountered. Although they also brought slaves, servants often ran away halfway because they could not bear this suffering, and at this time, they had to carry their own luggage.
It was with such rudimentary equipment that he coped with five robbers, four times of food cuts, as well as tigers that jumped out of nowhere, poisonous snakes and insects that were difficult to detect, and countless rapids that nearly drowned him, falling steep cliffs, suffocating caves, and so on.
"Xu Xiake" comic strip
If you think about it a little, such a hardcore trip, without a little force value, can never survive again and again. The Qing Dynasty's "Biography of Xu Xiake" once gave a specific description of his "force value": climbing cliffs, crossing jungles, agile as apes, strong as cattle, often walking for hundreds of miles. Isn't this a real-world master and what?
In the eyes of people at that time, he was a god-like being. When Xu Xiake visited the Tea Tomb in Hunan, it was said that there was a sinister cave nearby, which was the place of the elves, and no one had ever dared to explore it. But Xu Xiake was very excited when he heard this, and soon he held a torch in his hand, rubbed the rock on his back, and fell into the water and entered the hole.
Due to the careful investigation of the structure and stone topography of the cave, he did not come out of the cave for a long time, and the villagers once thought that the warrior had been killed in the cave by the youkai. When he climbed out of the cave safely, everyone knelt down and marveled, treating Xu Xiake as a god.
China in the Classics: Xu Xiake's Travels
02 Hero's Rebellion
Throughout Xu Xiake's journey, it can be roughly divided into two parts, before 1625, when his mother was alive, he adhered to the concept of his parents traveling in the near future, the trip must have a direction and plan, and the return date will never change or delay, from less than ten days to more than a few months.
After his mother's death, he felt that he was getting older, and soon began a four-year trip to Yungui, which was the longest and last time he had traveled in his lifetime. During this journey, he wrote "Tracing the Origin of the Yangtze River", boldly rejecting the claim in the "Shangshu Yugong" that the Min River is the source of the Yangtze River.
It should be known that in the eyes of ancient emperors and scholars, the "Shang Shu Yu Gong" was written by Dayu himself and compiled by Confucius, which is a classic in the Confucian classics, and for thousands of years later generations only deserve to understand, and must not be questioned.
As soon as Xu Xiake's words came out, he was immediately regarded as an outright arrogant act by the literati of the same generation. But he insisted on the results of his field investigation: the Jinsha River, which is the source of the Yangtze River with the MinJiang River, is far greater than the Minjiang River regardless of the length of the process and the water flow, so the Minjiang River is not the source of the Yangtze River. In addition, he also deduced that the source of the Yangtze River should be the same as the source of the Yellow River, in the Kunlun Mountains.
This remarkable inference, after more than two hundred years of silence, was gradually accepted by Qing scholars, and since then, the origin of the Yangtze River has been traced along the Kunlun Mountains of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. In 1977, it was finally determined that the Tuotuo River, which originated in the Geladan Winter Snow Mountain, was the source of the Yangtze River.
The Tuotuo River, the source of the Yangtze River
03 The Detachment of the Hero
To say who gave Xu Xiake so much courage, it must be family. The Xu family in Jiangyin is a very interesting family, and Xu Xiake's ancestor Xu Jing is also a person with a very special experience.
Not burdened by the career
During the reign of Ming Hongzhi, Xu Jing was deprived of his meritorious name and qualification for the lifelong examination because he was involved in a fraud case, and also implicated his friend Tang Bohu to participate in the scientific examination for life (this fraud case is still inconclusive), and since then the Xu family has begun to be discouraged by Shitu.
In Xu Xiake's generation, he only symbolically took a boy exam at the age of 15, and after falling behind Sun Shan, he no longer planned to take a scientific expedition and completely gave up his career, but his father not only did not scold him, but supported him to do what he liked - "the big husband is facing the blue sea and twilight".
Xu Xiake, real name Xu Hongzu
Not burdened by money
Speaking of the Xu family, it was once one of the most prestigious families in Jiangyin, but in Xu Xiake's generation, along with the decline of the Ming Dynasty, it began to decline day by day, and it was very directly reflected in Xu Xiake's overstretched journey.
In the ninth year of Chongzhen (1636), he went to Hangzhou on September 30 and wrote in his diary: It is time to borrow another twelve pieces of silver with his friends. At this time, only ten days had passed since he left home on September 19, and in just a few days, he fell into the dilemma of borrowing money, which was very inconsistent with Xu Xiake's highly planned style, which showed how insufficient the travel funds were.
In the tenth year of Chongzhen (1637), Zhang Xianzhong's army was defeated in Hubei, and the army and displaced people were everywhere, and bandits were rampant. Xu Xiake and his friend Jingwen monk encountered bandits when they went to Hengyang via the Xiang River.
In his travelogue, he described the situation this way: the shouts of thieves were deafening, and torches and swords were densely struck. In a panic, Xu Xiake had to jump into the river and escape. For the rest of his life, he had no other possessions except a silver ear spoon pinned to his hair.
He was persuaded to go home and come back next time, but he said: I have a hammer with me, and if I die, I may as well bury me on the spot, where can I not bury my bones. For Xu Xiake, he knew very well that he was already fifty years old, and it was difficult for him to have the next chance to travel, and nothing but death could stop him from continuing to move forward, let alone just losing money.
In his travelogue, he also wrote many times that he did not drink alcohol or eat meat, sometimes took shelter in the rocks, and ate oranges for lunch, although the wind and meals were open every day, poor and poor, there was no salt for eating, and there was no grass for sleeping, but "even happy".
Xu Xiake travel route
04 Heroes have no regrets
In 1641, before his death, Xu Xiake left a famous passage summarizing his life: "Zhang Qian chiseled the air and did not see Kunlun; Tang Xuanzang and Yuan Yelü Chucai, the order of the Lord, were to travel west." I take the old cloth clothes, the lonely double ass, the poor quicksand, the upper Kunlun, the western region, the inscription of the country, and the three people for the four, death does not hate. ”
The gist is that Zhang Qian of the Han Dynasty, Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty, and Yelü Chucai of the Yuan Dynasty all traveled the world, but they were all ordered by the emperor, and I was a commoner, not the state, a crutch, a pair of straw shoes, able to travel the world like these three great figures, although I died without regrets.
After reading this passage over and over again, people inadvertently think of a scene in the martial arts novel "Divine Eagle Heroes": Hong Qigong and Ouyang Feng's top of Huashan are difficult to distinguish between the top of the mountain, and finally the two hug each other, laugh and die.
Laughing and dying is estimated to be the highest realm of death without regrets, presumably when Xu Xiake wrote this passage before he died, he was also so cheerful and clear. For him, the fame and fortune of the world, the praise or depreciation of the future generations, has never been nothing, because this life is a life he spent in the way he likes, and this is probably also people's ultimate spiritual yearning for chivalry.
Resources:
Qian Qianyi's Biography of Xu Xia
Read Xu Xiake alone: 400 years ago, he changed his travel writing
National Humanistic History "More than 30 years without work, where did Xu Xiake's travel expenses come from?" 》