Xu Xiake - Geography and 'travel Records'

Geography and 'travel Records'

The written work of Xu Xiake's travel records and diaries contained some 404,000 written Chinese characters, an enormous work for a single author of his time. Xu traveled throughout the provinces of China, often on foot, to write his enormous geographical and topographical treatise, documenting various details of his travels, such as the locations of small gorges, or mineral beds such as mica schists (see mineralogy). Xu's work was largely systematic, providing accurate details of measurement, and his work, which would be later translated by Ding Wenjiang, read 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 West River (Xi Jiang) in Guangdong. He also discovered the Mekong and Salween rivers were, in fact, separate drainages with completely separate watersheds. Prior to his life the Chinese were confused by the enormous number of bends and detours of the Lunan Mountains (鲁南山) south of Ningnan to the point where they believed the Jinsha Jiang was a separate river from the Yangtze River. It was Xu Xiake who discovered that the Jinsha Jiang was simply the western section of the Yangtze River.