Xu Xiake: 30 years, one pair of feet
徐霞客：一个人的万里山河
A Ming-dynasty scholar who refused the one approved path in life and walked China for thirty years instead. Eight stories, from his first step out of the gate to the book that outlived him.
He Said No to the Imperial Exam. Then Walked China for 30 Years.
他放弃了明朝唯一的成功之路
In Ming China a scholar's life came pre-written: study the classics, pass the exams, take office. Xu Xiake failed the first exam at fifteen, never went back, and walked his own road for thirty years.
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She Sewed Him a Travel Cap and Sent Him Away
一位母亲亲手送儿子去远方
Confucius taught that while your parents live, you do not travel far. Four hundred years ago in Jiangyin, Xu Xiake's mother sewed him a traveling cap and told him to go.
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Three Robberies, Four Starvations, Zero Regrets
三次遇盗,四次断粮
No GPS, no rain gear, no rescue team. In thirty years on the road Xu Xiake was robbed three times and ran out of food four times, and he almost never wrote it down as misery.
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He Carried His Friend's Ashes for a Year
静闻之约
The monk Jingwen spent nearly twenty years copying the Lotus Sutra in his own blood, then died on the road to Mount Jizu. Xu Xiake carried his bones and the sutra the rest of the way.
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Mapping the Underworld 200 Years Before Europe
举着火把的地下探险家
With a torch, a notebook, and no map, Xu Xiake entered more than a hundred limestone caves in southwest China. His record of Guilin's Seven-Star Cave still broadly matches modern surveys.
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The River Map Was Wrong for 2,000 Years. He Fixed It on Foot.
他纠正了一个流传两千年的错误
The classics said the Yangtze began at Mount Min. Xu Xiake followed the Jinsha upstream and argued it was the main river. He never reached the modern source, but he turned the question in the right direction.
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The Emperor Lost His Empire. Xu Xiake Found His Life.
崇祯没能守住天下,徐霞客找到了自己的山河
Three years after Xu Xiake died, rebels took Beijing and the Chongzhen Emperor ended his life on Coal Hill. One man held all the power and lost an empire. The other held no office and chose what his life would mean.
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The Book That Refused to Die: Xu Xiake's Travel Diaries
一本拒绝死去的书
When Xu Xiake died in 1641, his travel diaries were a mass of loose drafts. War scattered them, and it took more than 130 years of searching and copying before the first printed edition appeared in 1776.
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