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| MARCO POLO'S TRAVEL TO EAST AND CHANGCHUN TAOIST'S TRAVEL TO WEST——A Case study on Behavior Geography and the Thinking Mode |
| LI Xiao-bo1,2, YUAN Shuang-lin2 |
1. Urban Institute, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610066, China;
2. College of Tourism, Sichuan Normal University, Chengdu 610066, China |
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Abstract As travel notes can convey the traveler's thoughts, we regard it as a 'map' that can reflects people's perception in their minds. When we come to study the travel notes, the subject's differences of behavior geography can never be ignored. The essentially symbolic factors of cultural geography background are language, religion and custom, of which the particularly important ones are the religion and custom. But, in the book "The Travel notes of Marco Polo", we find that nothing about those landscapes was mentioned. The reasons for that are:As a western foreigner, he hardly can understand Chinese people's cultural feeling thoroughly; as a businessman, he would pay more attention to market, money and women. Travelers' motivation has great influence on themselves. Their observation and selection of everything around them usually depend on their own choices. Besides Marco Polo's cultural background in which he grew up, in the author's opinion, he received Mongol nationality's culture tradition for emperor's trust since he arrived in China. A lot of people traveled among Asia, Europe and Africa due to the reasons of politics, religion and personal interest. They left a large quantity of written materials. This essay is to analyze the differences between the features of traveler's behavior and geographic vision within two most typical travels in that special period:"The Travel notes of Marco Polo" and "The Journey to West of Chang Chun Taoist". Considering their culture and geography background, one is Christian, while the other is Taoist. Marco Pole's description was based on a thinking experiences while Qiu Chuji, a Taoist leader, saw everything throughout the journey from an Taoist's angle; Regarding the motive of traveling, each had his own purpose in business or political preach, Marco Polo focused on products, market and trade while Qiu Chuji emphasized on the religion purpose and the political purpose; In respect of custom, one was seeking to pursue novelty while another tried to appreciate the nature and life. Through this typical case, the essay also puts forward three inspirations about the research into ancient Chinese travels:different space perceptions in the same historical period, different space perceptions in different historical periods and the general and specific characteristic of the collective and the individual.
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Received: 29 January 2003
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2004, Vol. 19 
