A girl from a rich family disguises herself as a boy to go to school, falls in love with a classmate who never guesses, and is promised to another man. When he dies, the earth opens at his grave and the two fly away as butterflies. One of China's four great folk tales, it is often called the oriental Romeo and Juliet.
The route follows the tale from the heroine's home in Shangyu, to the school in Hangzhou, to the Ningbo temple and tomb, then to a rival claim in Yixing and a statue in Verona. Every Chinese site is local tradition rather than proven history.
Two snake spirits take human form, one borrows an umbrella from a young pharmacist, and an abbot spends the rest of the story trying to separate them. One of China's best-loved folk tales still has its stage set in real places.
The route follows the popular opera version from the legend's mountain origin, through Hangzhou's West Lake and the flooded temple at Jinshan, to Broken Bridge and the pagoda where the White Snake ends up imprisoned. The tale exists in many versions; this route follows the standard opera telling.
In 1751 the Qianlong Emperor left Beijing for the first of six tours south to Jiangnan, the last in 1784. Much of the way ran along the Grand Canal, and the tours took in the dikes of the Huai, the cities of Jiangnan and the holy sites of Shandong.
This route follows the first two tours. In 1751: the Hongze Lake embankment, West Lake and Mount Tai. In 1757: Yangzhou, Suzhou and Qufu. Dates follow the Chinese lunar calendar used in the court records.
A poet who nearly lost his head for his verses, Su Shi (Su Dongpo) was banished to Huangzhou, Huizhou and Hainan, and wrote some of his best work in exile.
The route follows his life in order, from his family home in Sichuan through the 1079 trial, three places of banishment, and his death at Changzhou in 1101. Several stops are rebuilt memorials or city-level markers, and each says so.
Jin Yong, the grand master of martial arts fiction, was born in Haining, Zhejiang. This route follows him out of the family house, to the tide he loved, and then across China to the places his heroes fight: a lake in Jiaxing, an island off Zhoushan, the mountains and monastery of Hua, Shaolin and Wudang, and a cell under Hangzhou's West Lake.
The real landmarks are documented; the sects, manors and duels set at them are fiction. Each stop says which is which, and where a pin marks the real place, it is not a scene.
Water Margin follows 108 spirits released from a sealed hall who return as outlaws, with Song Jiang as their chief. Its episodes range from Daoism's mountain in Jiangxi to the Shandong marsh, a tiger-haunted ridge, a Yangtze tavern and the Hangzhou tide.
Each stop is a scene from the novel, set beside what is documented: a real Song Jiang appears in the Song History, and the real Liangshan Marsh silted up centuries ago. Places tied to the story only by later tradition are marked.
In 1271 a seventeen-year-old Venetian set out with his father and uncle for the court of Kublai Khan and did not come home for 24 years. Years later, in a Genoese prison, he dictated what he had seen to a fellow inmate, and The Travels of Marco Polo was the result.
The route follows the book from Venice and Acre to the Persian Gulf, across the Pamir highlands and the desert to Kublai's summer and winter capitals, south to Hangzhou and the port of Zayton, and home again. Some of the roads are reconstructed by scholars, and Polo sometimes exaggerates, so each stop notes where the evidence is thin.
In June 1325 a 21-year-old law student left Tangier to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. He did not come home for 24 years. Ibn Battuta crossed the Islamic world and beyond — Arabia, East Africa, Anatolia, Central Asia, India, the Maldives, Sumatra and China — earning his keep as a judge and a guest of sultans, marrying and divorcing along the way. By some estimates he covered about 117,000 kilometres, more than any traveller before the age of steam.
Back in Morocco he dictated his memories, the Rihla, to a scholar who polished them and borrowed passages from older books, so not every scene was his own. The route picks out nine stops in the order he reached them; it is not one continuous road. There are no travel tips for Mecca or Mali.
