collect sacred texts, and visit holy sites. Written accounts recorded the experiences of
m any pilgrims, such as Faxian, Xuanzang, and Yijing. Though not so num erous as the
Chinese pilgrims, Buddhists from Japan, Korea, and other lands also ventured abroad in
the interests of spiritual enlightenm ent.
Medieval Europeans did not hit the roads in such large num bers as th eir M uslim an d
East Asian counterparts during the early part of the postclassical era, although gradually
increasing crow ds of Christian
pilgrims flo wed to Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de-
Com postela (in northern Spain), and other sites. After the 12th century, how ever,
m erchants, pilgrims, an d missionaries from medieval Europe traveled wid ely an d left
num erous travel accounts, of w hich Marco Polo's description of his
travels and sojourn
in China is the best know n. As they became familiar with the larger w orld of the eastern
hemisphere—-and the profitable commercial opportunities that it offered—European
people w orked to find new and m ore direct routes to Asian and African m arkets. Their
efforts took them not only to all parts of the eastern hemisphere, but eventually to the
Am ericas and O ceania as w ell.
If M uslim and Chinese peoples dominated travel and travel writing in postclassical
tim es, European explorers, conquerors, m erchants, and missionaries took center stage
during the early m odern era (about 1500 to 1800 CE). By no m eans did M uslim an d
Chinese travel come to a halt in early m odern tim es. But European peoples ventured to
the distant corners of the globe, and European printing presses churned out thousands
of travel accounts that described foreign lands and peoples for a reading public
w ith an
apparently insatiable appetite for new s about the larger w orld. The volume o f travel
literature w as so great that several editors, including G iam battista Ram usio, R ichard
H akluyt, Theodore de Bry, and Samuel Purchas, assembled num erous travel accounts
and m ade them available in enorm ous published collections.
D uring the 19th century, European travelers m ade th e ir w ay to th e in terio r regio n s o f
A frica and the A m ericas, generating a fresh round of travel writing as they did so .
Meanw hile, European colonial administrators devoted num erous w ritings to the
societies
of their colonial subjects, particularly in A sian and A frican colonies they
established. By midcentury, attention w as flo wing also in the other direction. Painfully
aw are of the military and technological prow ess of European and Euro-Am erican
societies, A sian travelers in particular visited Europe and the U nited States in hopes of
discovering principles useful for the reorganisation of their own societies. A m ong th e
m ost prominent of these travelers w ho m ade extensive
use of their overseas
observations and experiences in their own writin gs w ere the Japanese re-
forme r Fukuzaw a Yukichi and the Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen.
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With the development of inexpensive and reliable means of mass transport, the 20th
century witnessed explosions both in the frequency of long-distance
travel and in the
volume of travel writing. While a great deal of travel took place for reasons of business,
administration, diplomacy, pilgrimage, and missionary work, as in ages past, increasingly
effective modes of mass transport made it possible for new kinds of travel to flourish.
The most distinctive of them was mass tourism, which emerged as a major form of
consumption for individuals living in the world's wealthy societies.
Tourism enabled
consumers to get away from home to see the sights in Rome, take a cruise through the
Caribbean, walk the Great Wall of China, visit some wineries in Bordeaux, or go on safari
in Kenya. A peculiar variant of the travel account arose to meet the needs of these
tourists: the guidebook, which offered advice on food, lodging, shopping, local customs,
and all the sights that visitors should not miss seeing. Tourism has had a massive
economic
impact throughout the world, but other new forms of travel have also had
considerable influence in contemporary times.
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