Four Months of Idle Roaming: the West Lake Records of Yuan Hongdao (1568-1610)

Abstract

Travel in Imperial China was undertaken for a variety of reasons, although mutual toleration may not always have been the primary motivation. In the case of the educated elite, it was government service or the all-important examination system that most frequently necessitated one's leaving home, but visiting friends, self or imperially imposed exile, or the simple urge to see other places might all produce the same result. For these men though, to travel almost always demanded the composition of some sort of textual record to mark the occasion, a record that would place the writer firmly within the literary tradition associated with a particular site. Not to compose such a record was for many, unthinkable - that one's life might be lost to posterity was a possibility most men-of-letters sought tirelessly to avoid.