ABSTRACT
F rom ancient times, nature in China has been the basis of countless myths and legends: these mythologies coalesced to create what has been called
'a vast spatiotemporal edifice, imbued with moral/aesthetic overtones.'l While the youji :i& 1(. (Travel Account or travel diary) arose as a genre in its own right during the Tang dynasty (618-907 AD), its origins can be traced back several hundred years earlier. The strong fantastical elements contained in early geographical and pseudo-geographical works provided a wealth of source material for travel writers who could switch from sober analysis of a scene to the recital of a litany of fantastic figures and landscapes. Travel writing also drew on and fed off developments in Chinese poetry, especially the notion of climbing on high in order to achieve a view into a distance imbued with both temporal and spatial significance. By the start of the Tang dynasty, there was already a well-established tradition of poetry relating specifically to landscape, the best exponents of which were Xie Lingyun
~:f:i! (385-433) and Tao Yuanming f,;\J if~ Il}] (365-427). By far the greatest part of the extant body of traditional Chinese travel
diaries deal with journeys undertaken within China. There were exceptions to this pattern, such as the long accounts of perilous journeys to India by monks searching for the genuine Buddhist sutras. However, China's vastness and the variety of its landscape, coupled with regularly changing national boundaries ensured that the lure of the other, different exotic peoples and beautiful scenery, afforded a beguiling constant. In concentrating on western colonial and post-colonial attitudes, recent western scholarship on travel diaries, is thus, for the most part, of little relevance.
