From Dadu to Shangdu

"Traveling with Mr. Luo, even the mountains and rivers have subtitles."
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🏆Chinese Literature Media Awards 🏆Spring Breeze Reading Festival Annual Non-Fiction Award 🏆One Way Street Bookstore Literary Award Annual Work 🏆Oriental History Review Annual History Book
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◎ Editor's recommendation★A classic work of domestic travel literature, a historical essay full of childlike innocence.
Peking University historian Luo Xin's hiking tour is a profound exploration of history, the present, and oneself.
Fifty-three-year-old Peking University professor Luo Xin spent fifteen days walking 450 kilometers from the Yuan Dynasty capital of Beijing to Shangdu in Inner Mongolia. During this journey, he shed blood, sweat, and endured hardships, coming into contact with China and its people along this vicissitudes of life.
“Travelers don’t come to seek novelties; you briefly (even if only superficially) blend into every place you pass through. You are not a high-handed tourist; you are a sweaty passerby with a backpack on his back. You are a traveler who needs and will certainly receive sympathy.”
A truly acclaimed work, it has garnered countless accolades and is constantly read. This is a work filled with scholarship and insight, compassion and care.
In Mr. Luo's writing, every road, every river, every hill, every bird, solidifies the changes and inheritance of history. History, linguistics, geography, archaeology, natural history, poetry... all come to mind, full of profound knowledge and a historian's sense of mission and insight.
“The historian’s mission is to rebel against the dominant understanding of history.”
“Our history writing is unfair to ordinary people.”
“Man is not only the bearer of fate, but also the creator of fate.”
“Real history should give more opportunities to the little people.”
★The ancient times and the present reflect each other, history and life intersect, and you can rediscover China and yourself on the ancient road.
On this road, history and reality meet. Anecdotes of Yuan Dynasty emperors and ministers, the footprints of modern explorers, the suffering of today's people, and the first half of my life intersect and intersect, creating a story both magnificent and delicate. It's a book worth reading and savoring over and over again.
An unknown crush in youth, a hike abandoned halfway thirty years ago, a journey that nearly left one disabled in a snowstorm twenty years ago, the death of a promising female disciple, the mysterious disappearance of a young doctor with whom one had only a passing acquaintance... Life is like a temporary stay, and this is a work of writing that contains hidden deep emotions.
★When time and space are compressed to the limit, the more so, the more the significance of walking becomes prominent.
Traveling draws us deeper into our inner selves while also opening us to the world beyond. This book brings together many travelers' reflections on the meaning of hiking. The passages quoted from foreign travelers are almost all beautifully translated by the author, each one containing a golden sentence.
“In the post-industrial age, when time and space are compressed to the point where they are barely worthy of measurement, hiking is a form of resistance to the mainstream.”
★This book is accompanied by exquisite hand-drawn illustrations and hand-drawn maps, vividly showing the historical relics and cultural features along the way.
From Dadu to Shangdu, this was the route the Yuan Dynasty emperors traveled, migrating from spring to autumn like migratory birds. It marked the gradual transition from agricultural civilization to grassland civilization. This is where the mountains end and the grasslands begin, running through both inside and outside the Great Wall. Since ancient times, it has been a key transportation route from the Mongolian Plateau to the North China Plain.
Peking University professor Luo Xin, an expert in Chinese medieval history and the history of ancient Chinese frontier ethnic groups, set out from Jiandemen in Beijing at a young age, traveled north along the Yuan Dynasty chariot road, passed Longhutai, crossed Juyongguan, walked through Heigu, crossed Shaling, and with his luggage on his back, he walked through the overlapping valleys of Beijing and Hebei and entered the Inner Mongolia grasslands. He was not afraid of the scorching sun, heavy rain, flying dust, and difficult mountain roads. He walked between ridges and valleys, and step by step walked the 450 kilometers of mountains and rivers from Jiandemen to Mingdemen, and arrived in Shangdu, fulfilling his long-cherished wish of fifteen years ago.
"As someone who studies Chinese history professionally, do I really understand the China I'm studying?"
"At my age, all my hopes, dreams, confidence, and ideals have been 'washed away by the wind and rain,' leaving only unspeakable helplessness, frustration, resentment, and confusion. Yes, do I understand the society I live in? What is the connection between the distant and mysterious China I studied and the China of today that often baffles me?"
Historian Luo Xin began a profound exploration of history, the present, and himself through arduous hiking.

2023-01-01

新星出版社

New Classic Amber, New Classic Culture

368

9787513348584