Li Daoyuan, a native of Zhuozhou (now Zhuozhou City, Hebei Province), is good at words. Northern Wei Dynasty official and geographer, son of Qingzhou secretariat Fan Li. As an outstanding geographer, Li Daoyuan made many comments on the famous geographical works of the previous generation in the preface to Zhu.
Before the Qin dynasty, there were many geography books, but at that time, the country was not unified, the level of productivity was underdeveloped, and people's concept of geography was still vague. The common problem in these works is fiction, such as Shan Hai Jing, Mu Chuan, etc. However, Li Daoyuan is firmly opposed to "fictional geography". Zhu put forward his own research methods and working methods in Preface, that is, paying attention to field investigation.
Therefore, the book Notes on Water Mirror records a great deal of achievements made by Li Daoyuan in field investigation, which shows that he visited many places in order to obtain real geographical information, covering the central plains south of the Great Wall and east of Qinling Mountains, and accumulated a lot of practical experience and geographical information.
Li Daoyuan's deeds:
1, bookish
While traveling, Li Daoyuan loved reading and was famous for it. In daily life, books are his inseparable "companion". He has read many books in his life, especially books on geographical description, almost all of them. He studied very carefully, trying to understand and understand the records in the book, and trying to explore the reasons for the differences in the records in the same place in each book. A lot of reading made him knowledgeable and became a famous scholar at that time.
2. Determined to write a book
According to legend, Li Daoyuan is diligent and studious, and widely reads all kinds of strange books. When he was young, he decided to annotate the geography book Water Mirror written by Sang Qin at the end of the Western Han Dynasty. Through on-the-spot investigation and study of geography books, Li Daoyuan deeply felt that the previous geography works, including Shan Hai Jing, Yu Gong, Han Shu Geography and a large number of local works, recorded the geographical situation too simply.
During the Three Kingdoms period, someone wrote a book "Water Mirror". Although it is a little outline, it only records the river, not the geographical situation of the area where the river flows, and the description of the river is too simple, with many omissions. What's more, the geographical location is not fixed, and it is constantly changing with the passage of time.
For example, rivers will change their routes, place names will change, towns will rise and fall, and so on. In particular, people's labor will constantly change the landscape of the ground. Therefore, historical geographical works can no longer meet people's needs. Li Daoyuan decided to write a book reflecting the geographical features and historical changes at that time.