Xu Xiake's Travels is the prose travel notes of Xu Xiake, a geographer in Ming Dynasty. During his 34 years' travel in the late Ming Dynasty, Xu Hongzu wrote 17 days' travel notes of Taishan, Yandang Mountain, Huangshan Mountain and Lushan Mountain, as well as a diary of a trip to Zhejiang, a diary of a trip to Jiangyou, a diary of a trip to Chu, a diary of a trip to western Guangdong, a diary of a trip to Guizhou and a diary of a trip to Yunnan.
In addition to scattered people, there are more than 600,000 words of travel notes. After his death, he was compiled into Xu Xiake's Travels by others. There are 10 volumes, 12 volumes, 20 volumes and so on. On the basis of the manuscript, Renshou School and Ji Xu wrote a manuscript, which was written in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen (1642).
The historical value of Xu Xiake's travel notes covers a wide range. Xu Xiake's contribution to landscape geography is not only the observation of mountain landforms, but also the detailed record of hydrological distribution, the exploration of river source and the experience of the relationship between landscape and climate.
Xu Xiake's observation of the political situation at that time was also very in-depth. He traveled around and saw the corruption of the overall political atmosphere, the looting of the buffer region, the disorder of the chieftain system, the hardships of people's lives and the relaxation of military defense on the border, all of which showed the political corruption in the late Ming Dynasty.
His travels are recorded in many academies, historical sites, inscriptions, inscriptions and special cultures of ethnic minorities, which have played a great role in the preservation of cultural relics.