The Story of China by Michael Wood

Author:Michael Wood
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2020-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

His travels over the next twenty-seven years took him to the Yellow River and the Yangtze, the Five Sacred Mountains, the glorious wooded hills around Huangshan, and the coasts of Fujian, where in the troubled days of the Ming decline between the 1610s and 1630s reports of pirate raids and rampaging gangs of bandits led to cancelled local coastal ferries and disrupted journeys. But he also went down into the borderlands of Burma, Laos and Vietnam, 2,000 miles from Beijing, where he gives us a unique insight into the indigenous peoples on the very edge of the Ming world, the exotic Other.

Xu wanted to go beyond where other writers had gone, though as he never synthesised his notes we cannot know the full scope of his planned great work. These were not only travels but also explorations; for example, he attempted to resolve debates about the location of the headwaters of the Yangtze. What comes through is his incredible bravery and independence of thought. Tall, rangy and physically tough, he was a big man: ‘strong as an ox but nimble as a monkey’. All who met him recognised ‘a great ascetic… he has no interest in office and a disdain for money. When it comes to the landscape he is prepared to risk his own safety; for the sake of his writing he is willing to sell himself.’ Another reported:

When I questioned him his voice was clear as a bell, his words as true as the hub of a wheel. He spoke incisively and inexhaustibly… his bright green eyes flash day or night and his voice is clear as a bell. As spare as a Daoist priest, his outward deportment is that of a mountain recluse, but there resides in him a rich spirit and the essence of courage. Speaking with him his words were upright and lofty, full of the stuff of strange journeys and extreme danger.

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