明朝地理學家徐霞客早年家境殷實，自幼喜歡博覽羣書，同時，早早立下志向要探尋名山大川的奧秘。Xu Xiake, the Ming-dynasty geographer, was born into a comfortable household. He read widely from childhood, and set his heart early on uncovering the secrets of China's great mountains and rivers.
父親去世，得到豁達的母親允許後，徐霞客便踏上了漂泊的旅程。不論行程多麼緊湊，他晚上都會把白天觀察所得記錄下來。這些零散信息最終被編纂成冊，成為被世人廣泛傳閲的《徐霞客遊記》。After his father died and his broad-minded mother gave her blessing, Xu Xiake set out on a life of travel. However packed the day's itinerary, he wrote up his observations each night. Those scattered notes were eventually compiled into a single volume — The Travel Diaries of Xu Xiake (《徐霞客遊記》) — which has been widely read ever since.
古人想要看看外面的世界和詩意的遠方，大多舟車勞頓，風雨兼程。而如今，網絡的發達，社媒的普及，讓人們足不出户即可將世界盡收眼底。For the ancients, seeing the wider world — the poetic distance — meant long journeys by boat and cart, pressing on through wind and rain. Today, with the internet and social media, we can take in the whole world without leaving home.
有人問：讀萬卷書，行萬里路，兩者關係如何？Someone once asked: what is the relationship between reading ten thousand books and travelling ten thousand miles?
余秋雨：沒有兩者。路，就是書。Yu Qiuyu replied: there are not two things. The road is the book.
——《文化苦旅》— A Bitter Journey Through Culture (《文化苦旅》)
在快節奏的今天，我們不妨通過文學作品來慢慢領略中國的山水景緻。In today's fast-paced world, literature offers a slower way to take in the landscapes of China.
泰山Mount Tai (泰山)
杜甫《望嶽》中寫道：Du Fu wrote in Gazing at the Sacred Peak (《望嶽》):
「岱宗夫如何？齊魯青未了」“What is Daizong like? Across Qi and Lu, its green has no end.”
這首詩描繪了泰山氣勢磅礴、神奇秀麗的景色，體現出詩人敢於攀登的豪情壯志。The poem captures Mount Tai's imposing scale and singular beauty, and with it the poet's bold ambition to climb.
楊朔的《泰山極頂》寫道：Yang Shuo wrote in At the Summit of Mount Tai (《泰山極頂》):
有人説：登泰山而看不到日出，就像一出大戲沒有戲眼，味兒終究有點寡淡。“Some say that to climb Mount Tai and miss the sunrise is like a grand opera without its pivotal scene — in the end, the flavour is thin.”
文章以對泰山日出的期待開篇，描繪出泰山美景以及對大好河山的熱愛之情。The essay opens with that anticipation of sunrise, then unfolds into a portrait of the mountain and a declaration of love for the country's landscapes.
黃山Mount Huang (黃山)
清代詩人吳灝曾在《曉看黃山》寫道：The Qing-dynasty poet Wu Hao wrote in Viewing Mount Huang at Dawn (《曉看黃山》):
奇峯三十六，仙子結青鬟。日際雲頭樹，人間天上山。九州人共仰，千載鶴來還。遙見樵蘇者，披雲度石關。“Thirty-six wondrous peaks, like immortals with their hair coiled green. At the sun's edge, trees crown the clouds; here in the mortal world stands a mountain of heaven. All nine regions look up to it; for a thousand years the cranes have returned. Far off, a woodcutter appears, parting the clouds to cross the stone pass.”
老舍在《黃山小詩之一》中也寫過：Lao She also wrote, in the first of his Short Poems on Mount Huang (《黃山小詩之一》):
天都奇偉海雲幽，蓮蕊蓮花高入秋。欲識黃山真面目，風華半在玉屏樓。“Tiandu Peak stands magnificent, the sea of cloud deep and still; Lotus Bud and Lotus Flower peaks rise high into autumn. If you would know the true face of Mount Huang, half its splendour is seen from Yuping Lodge.”
古今兩首小詩，都將黃山的縹緲雲海、奇偉的山峯等景緻展現在讀者面前。黃山雖不在「五嶽」之中，但一直以來都有「黃山歸來不看嶽」的説法。Two short poems, centuries apart, both set Mount Huang's drifting sea of cloud and extraordinary peaks before the reader. Mount Huang is not one of the Five Great Mountains, yet the old saying still holds: once you have come back from Mount Huang, no other peak is worth seeing.
江河Rivers
上善若水，老子在《道德經》中指出，最善良的人有如水般的品德。可見，人們對水的崇拜自古就有，或因為其能造福一方，或因為其神力無邊。“The highest good is like water.” In the Tao Te Ching (《道德經》), Laozi held that the finest people have the character of water. Reverence for water is clearly ancient — whether for the good it brings to a region, or for the boundless power it was believed to hold.
黃河The Yellow River (黃河)
唐詩《登鸛雀樓》中寫道：The Tang poem Ascending Stork Tower (《登鸛雀樓》) reads:
白日依山盡，黃河入海流。欲窮千里目，更上一層樓。“The white sun sets behind the mountains; the Yellow River flows on into the sea. To see a thousand miles further, climb one more storey.”
作者王之渙是山西人，又在山西做過官，對於站在樓上，遠眺黃河的這一獨特景緻記憶猶新。滾滾黃河水，濁浪翻滾。The poet Wang Zhihuan was a Shanxi man who also served as an official there, and the sight of the Yellow River seen from the tower stayed vivid in his memory: the river rolling on, its muddy waves surging.
蕭紅在短篇小説《黃河》中這樣描述：Xiao Hong described it this way in her short story The Yellow River (《黃河》):
悲壯的黃土層茫茫地順着黃河的北岸延展下去，河水在遼遠的轉彎的地方完全是銀白色，而在近處，它們則扭絞着旋卷着和魚鱗一樣。“The solemn loess stretches away along the river's northern bank as far as the eye can see. Where the water bends into the distance it is pure silver-white; close at hand it twists and curls like fish scales.”
黃河雖然長度不及長江，但是黃河流域是遠古先民最早棲息繁衍的地帶，也是華夏文明最早發祥地帶。The Yellow River is shorter than the Yangtze, but its basin was where China's earliest ancestors first settled and multiplied — the cradle of Chinese civilisation.
小結In closing
仁者樂山，智者樂水。人們自古就對山河寄予了濃厚的情感，文人墨客更是爭相讚頌大自然的鬼斧神工。The benevolent delight in mountains; the wise delight in water. People have invested deep feeling in these landscapes since antiquity, and writers have vied with one another to praise nature's extraordinary craftsmanship.
山川是大地的組成部分，也是大地的象徵。我們生活在一方土地，便會將這情感雕琢於心，記錄於筆觸，關於山河的文學作品便應運而生。Mountains and rivers are both a part of the land and a symbol of it. Living on a patch of earth, we carve that feeling into our hearts and set it down in writing — and so the literature of mountains and rivers comes into being.