As the saying goes, "Read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles". In modern society, travelling is a very common thing. Almost everyone can go on a trip at any time as long as they want to. In fact, centuries ago, some famous people already travelled around China and they got a lot from exploration (探险).
Xu Xiake, a geographer and writer in Ming dynasty, spent more than thirty years on the road four hundred years ago. With his mother's encouragement, Xu Xiake travelled around China. He met with many difficulties on the road. But he never stopped travelling and writing.
Xu Xiake was on the road all his life, and his travel notes covered as much as his knowledge. His 600,000- word travel notes finally came out in 1776, about 135 years after his death. China Tourism Day is set on May 19th, the date when he started The Travels of Xu Xiake.
Some of Xu Xiake's Footprints around China
Macro Polo's Journey to the East
Marco Polo, a businessman born in 1254 in Italy, is known as a travel king in the west. In 1271, Marco Polo with his father and uncle set foot on the road to China. It took him four years. Along the way, he met bad weathers, a shortage of food and water and so on.
They reached Shangdu in Inner Mongolia in 1275. Kublai Khan gave them a warm welcome there and took them to Dadu.
Macro Polo's hard journey created one of the world's first best sellers The Travels of Macro Polo. Medieval (中世纪的) readers fell in love with Polo's wonderful descriptions of faraway lands and got to know China and Middle Asia.
