Alongside the scores of travel books about China written by foreign visitors, Chinese travelers' impressions of their own country rarely appear in translation. This anthology is the only comprehensive collection in English of Chinese travel writing from the first century A.D. through the nineteenth. Early examples of the genre describe sites important for their geography, history, and role in cultural mythology, but by the T'ang dynasty in the mid-eighth century certain historiographical and poetic discourses converged to form the "travel account" (yu-chi) and later the "travel diary" (jih-chi) as vehicles of personal expression and autobiography. These first-person narratives provide rich material for understanding the attitudes of Chinese literati toward place, nature, politics, and the self. The anthology is abundantly illustrated with paintings, portraits, maps, and drawings. Each selection is meticulously translated, carefully annotated, and prefaced by a brief description of the writer's life and work. The entire collection is introduced by an in-depth survey of the rise of Chinese travel writing as a cultural phenomenon. Inscribed Landscapes provides a unique resource for travelers as well as for scholars of Chinese literature, art, and history.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0
art complements travelogue:
An excellent anthology of the travel literature in China from earliest times. I particularly enjoyed Strassberg's selection of a few martyred writers from the Ming to Ching periods to highlight the cruelty of despots towards the literary world. The only suggestion I would have is if Strassberg could include the original Chinese script together with the translation. That way we can enjoy not only the original but understand it in plain english. The choice of woodblock prints is also excellent.
Finding China:
The editorial review is quite complete as to the contents of "Inscribed Landscapes", but I'd like to give future readers a more general impression that I was left with:
I thoroughly enjoyed Richard E. Strassberg's book as an introduction to the combined arts of Chinese travel writing, calligraphy, painting, and woodcut print making. Many of China's greatest writers are represented in chronological order, sometimes yielding interesting results when the same place is described centuries apart. I am not... more info
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