——徐霞客和他的母亲王孺人
In a culture of "stay close," she sewed him a travel cap and said: go.
"父母在,不远游。" "When your parents are alive, do not travel far." 两千多年前,孔子在《论语》里写下这句话。此后的中国,"孝"字几乎等于一个字面意思:留在父母身边。
Confucius wrote that two thousand years ago, in the Analects. For most of Chinese history, filial piety — xiào — had a nearly literal meaning: stay by your parents' side.
四百年前,江苏江阴的一位母亲,亲手颠覆了这个传统。她给儿子缝了一顶远行的帽子,对他说:去吧,志在四方。
Four hundred years ago, in the river town of Jiangyin, a mother quietly overturned the tradition. She sewed her son a traveling hat and told him: Go. A man's ambition belongs to the four directions.
她的儿子叫徐霞客。后来,他用一生走出了一部六十多万字的《徐霞客游记》。
Her son was Xu Xiake, who would walk for more than thirty years and leave behind one of the greatest travel diaries ever written.
可以说,没有这位母亲,就没有徐霞客。
It is no exaggeration: without this mother, there is no Xu Xiake.
一个家族的"考场诅咒"
A family's old wound
徐霞客为什么敢不走科举这条路?答案藏在他家族的一段旧伤里。
How did Xu Xiake dare to walk away from the imperial examinations — the only respectable career of his age? The answer lies in an old family wound.
一百多年前,1499 年,徐霞客的高祖徐经进京参加会试。徐经才华出众,与他同船赶考的,是另一位江南才子——唐寅,就是后来名满天下的唐伯虎。
More than a century earlier, in 1499, his great-great-grandfather Xu Jing traveled to Beijing for the metropolitan examination. Xu Jing was brilliant, and traveling with him was another prodigy from the south: Tang Yin — later famous across China as the painter Tang Bohu.
放榜前,有人弹劾主考官泄题,徐经和唐寅被牵连下狱。案子查来查去,没有实据,但两人的前程都毁了:被黜为胥吏,终身不得为官。徐经回到家乡,郁郁而终,死时只有三十五岁。唐伯虎从此看破仕途,成了中国历史上最著名的"风流才子"。
Before results were posted, someone accused the chief examiner of leaking the questions. Xu Jing and Tang Yin were thrown into prison. The case never produced solid evidence — but it didn't matter. Both men's careers were destroyed: stripped of rank, barred from office for life. Xu Jing returned home and died of heartbreak at thirty-five. Tang Yin gave up on officialdom and became the most famous "carefree genius" in Chinese art history.
一场科场冤案,改写了两个家族的命运。徐家从此对科举心灰意冷。到徐霞客的父亲徐有勉这一代,干脆终身不应科举、不入仕途,守着田园园林,寄情山水。有人劝他谋个一官半职,他躲都躲不及。
One examination scandal rewrote the fate of two families. The Xus never trusted the system again. Xu Xiake's father, Xu Youmian, refused office altogether, living quietly among his gardens and hills. When people urged him to seek a post, he fled the conversation.
所以,当徐霞客十五岁童子试落第、从此绝意科举时,这个家族没有人逼他回头。
So when fifteen-year-old Xu Xiake failed the entry-level exam and never looked back, nobody in this family pushed him.
一个家族,用了四代人的时间,才彻底走出那个考场。
It had taken the family four generations to walk out of that examination hall.
远游冠
The traveling cap
父亲在徐霞客十八九岁时意外去世。守孝期满,年轻人望着远山,心里发痒,却有一个顾虑:母亲年事已高。
His father died suddenly when Xu Xiake was about eighteen. When the mourning period ended, the young man gazed at the distant mountains with an itch in his heart — and one worry: his mother was growing old.
母亲王孺人看出了儿子的心思。
His mother, known to history only as Lady Wang, saw through him at once.
这位母亲是个了不起的女人。丈夫去世后,她靠纺织撑起家业,织出的布远近闻名。她没有读过多少书,却说出了当时极少有母亲说得出口的话。据友人为徐霞客写的墓志铭记载,母亲对他说:
She was a remarkable woman. After her husband's death she had held the family together at her loom, and the cloth she wove was famous in the county. She had little formal education, yet she said something almost no mother of her time would have said. According to the epitaph a friend later wrote for Xu Xiake, she told her son:
"志在四方,男子事也。" "A man's ambition lies in the four directions. That is what a man is for." ——好男儿志在四方。她还搬出《论语》为儿子"解围":孔子说"父母在,不远游",可后面还有半句,"游必有方"。去吧,约定好归期,按时回来,这就不违背圣人的话。
Then she did something sly and wonderful: she quoted Confucius back at the tradition. Yes, the Master said "while your parents live, do not travel far" — but the sentence has a second half: "if you do travel, have a plan." Go. Promise me a return date, and come home on time. Then you will have broken no rule of the sages.
她亲手为儿子缝制了一顶帽子,后人叫它"远游冠"。
And she sewed him a hat with her own hands. History calls it the "far-roaming cap."
大约 1607 年前后,二十岁的徐霞客戴着这顶帽子,第一次正式出游。从此,中国的山水间多了一个身影。
Around 1607, twenty-year-old Xu Xiake set out on his first real journey wearing that cap. From then on, China's mountains had a new shadow moving through them.
游必有方
Travel, but keep the appointment
母亲在世时,徐霞客的每一次出游都恪守着那条约定:定好去向,定好归期,按时回来。
While his mother lived, every one of Xu Xiake's journeys honored that covenant: a fixed destination, a promised return date, home on time.
每次归家,他都给母亲带回些山里的奇石、远方的特产,然后坐下来,把一路的见闻讲给母亲听:哪座山的云雾最奇,哪个洞里的石头像莲花,哪条江的水最清。母亲一边纺线一边听,听得入神,常常忘了手里的活。
At each homecoming he brought her strange stones from the mountains and small gifts from far places, then sat down and told her everything: which mountain had the strangest clouds, which cave held stones like lotus flowers, which river ran the clearest. She listened over her loom, forgetting the work in her hands.
母亲曾大病一场。病愈之后,徐霞客建了一座"晴山堂"——取"雨过天晴,青山依旧"之意——庆贺母亲康复,并请当时的文人墨客题咏刻石。这批石刻,今天还保存在江阴的徐霞客故居里。
Once she fell gravely ill. When she recovered, Xu Xiake built a hall to celebrate — the "Clear Mountain Hall," named for the moment when rain clears and the green mountains reappear — and asked the famous writers of the day to compose inscriptions for it. Those stone engravings still survive in his hometown today.
更令人动容的是后来发生的一件事。母亲八十岁那年,为了让儿子放心远行,她主动提出要和儿子一起出游。母子同游宜兴、句容一带的山水,一路上,八十岁的老人故意健步走在儿子前面——你看,娘身体好得很,你放心去。
Then comes the scene that moves me most. At eighty, to set her son free of worry, the old lady proposed a trip together. Mother and son traveled the hills around Yixing and Jurong, and along the way the eighty-year-old deliberately walked briskly ahead of her son — See? Your mother is strong. Go, and don't look back.
这大概是世界旅行史上最温柔的一次"同行":她不是在旅行,她是在用自己的脚步,替儿子卸下最后一丝牵挂。
It may be the gentlest journey in the history of travel. She wasn't sightseeing. She was using her own two feet to lift the last weight off her son's heart.
母亲去世之后
After she was gone
1625 年,王孺人去世,享年八十一岁。
Lady Wang died in 1625, at the age of eighty-one.
徐霞客守孝三年。此后,他的出游不再有归期。据友人记载,母亲去世后的徐霞客"不计程,亦不计年"——不再计算路程,也不再计算年月。
Xu Xiake mourned her for the traditional three years. After that, his journeys had no return dates. His friend's epitaph says that from then on he "counted neither the miles nor the years."
福建、广东、广西、贵州、云南……他走得越来越远,最终有了那场历时四年的万里远征。仿佛母亲生前,他把脚步收着;母亲走后,他把一生放开了。
Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, Guizhou, Yunnan — he went farther and farther, culminating in the four-year expedition southwest. As if while she lived he had held his stride in check; once she was gone, he set his whole life free.
有人说,徐霞客的游记是写给山河的。可细细读来,那更像是写给母亲的——她生前,他每一次归来都要讲给她听;她去世后,他把所有见闻写下来,一写就是三十多年。
People say Xu Xiake's diary was written for the mountains and rivers. Read closely, it feels more like it was written for her. While she lived, he told her everything on his return; after she died, he wrote everything down, for thirty more years.
写在最后
A word for today's parents
今天的父母常问:怎样才算爱孩子?
Parents today still ask: what does it mean to love a child?
四百年前那位母亲给出的答案,和"父母在,不远游"的时代完全相反:爱不是把孩子拴在身边,而是缝好一顶帽子,送他去看更大的世界。
Four centuries ago, one mother gave an answer exactly opposite to her age: love is not keeping your child beside you. Love is sewing a hat, and sending him out to see a bigger world.
她没能看到儿子后来的万里远征,没能看到那部"千古奇书"。但六十多万字的游记里,处处有她——那个读懂了《论语》后半句的女人,那个八十岁还要走在儿子前面的女人。
She never saw the great expedition. She never saw the "book of ages" her son would leave. But it is all there in the 600,000 characters — the woman who knew the second half of the Confucian sentence; the eighty-year-old who insisted on walking ahead.
下一篇,我们上路。去看看那三十年的旅途究竟有多苦:三次遇盗,四次断粮,仆人也半路逃走——而他为什么还说,乐在其中。
Next in the series, we hit the road ourselves — to see how hard those thirty years really were: three robberies, four times without food, a porter who fled mid-journey. And why, despite all of it, he called himself the happiest of men.