loud-covered mountains, a sense of tranquility, a house nestled among trees, two gentlemen sitting by the door engaged in conversation, and a plaque on the house that reads “Dong She Manor” tell us their location------Songjiang.

The two gentlemen are Xu Xiake and Chen Jiru, and the painting, titled Mountain High, River Deep, is one of the paintings in the exhibition “Footprints------Xu Xiake’s Travels as illustrated by Wang Jiafang” which ran until October 31 at Yunjian Art Gallery. At the opening of the exhibition, the artist graciously gifted the painting to the Songjiang District of Shanghai.

In the 17th century, Xu Xiake – one of the most distinguished travelers, geographers and writers in China - used to travel to Sheshan Hill to visit a hermit friend called Chen Jiru. In fact, Chen Jiru was the person who gave Xu his famous pen name “Xiake”, which means “traveler wandering beneath rosy clouds”.

Sometimes compared to Marco Polo, a 13th century Venetian explorer, Xu is dubbed the “Great Explorer” in Chinese culture. It was from Sheshan Hill in Songjiang that he set out on his last westbound journey.

How did Xu and Chen become friends? According to Songjiang’s former Business and Tourism Commission Deputy Director Lou Jianyuan, they first met in May 1624, during the Ming dynasty, through a mutual friend called Wang Qihai, a scholar from Fujian. Chen even wrote a celebratory letter for the 80th birthday of Xu’s mother.

Their friendship is documented in the painting created by contemporary artist Wang Jiafang from the Shanghai Painting Academy.

“The title of the painting refers to their mountain-high and river-deep friendship”, said Wang, who has drawn inspiration from Xu Xiake’s Travels, as well as Xu’s epitaph, poems, memoirs, and reflections on decades of travel experience. So far Wang has produced about a hundred paintings recreating mountains and rivers as illustrated by Xu.

An all-time classic “travelogue”, Xu Xiake’s Travels contains 630,000 Chinese characters. It is said that the reason why China’s “Tourism Day” falls on May 19 is because of the opening paragraph in the first chapter of Xu Xiake’s Travels, “Tiantai Mountain travel diary” where Xu writes, “On May 19, I set out westbound from Ninghai. When the clouds part, the sun pours through, and the mountains look delightful.”