Li Daoyuan's Notes on the Water Mirror in the 6th century A.D. is China's first comprehensive geographical work, which mainly records the river system. It has had a far-reaching impact on China's long-term historical development. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, many scholars have conducted in-depth and meticulous research on it from various aspects, forming a "Sydney" with wide influence. The annotation of water mirror takes the waterway recorded by water mirror as the key link. The Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty notes that there are 65,438+037 waterways in the water mirror, and the tributary is added to 65,438+0252 in the Water Mirror Note. Today, Zhao Yongfu counted the water bodies in the book, including lakes, lakes, ponds, springs, canals, ponds and ancient blasphemies, and recorded 2,596 places, twice as many as the Six Classics of the Tang Dynasty. Notes total 300,000 words. The geographical scope involved, in addition to basically taking the territory of the Western Han Dynasty as the writing object, also involved many foreign regions at that time, including India, Indo-China Peninsula and parts of the Korean Peninsula, covering an unprecedented area. The time range described can be traced back to the pre-Qin period.

From the Southern and Northern Dynasties to the contemporary era, it lasted for more than 2,000 years. It contains a wide range of geographical contents, including natural geography, human geography, mountains and rivers, historical evolution, customs and habits, character stories, fairy tales and so on. It's really an encyclopedia of geography in China in the 6th century. What is commendable is that such rich and colorful content is not a simple list of phenomena, but a systematic and comprehensive account. Professor Hou Renzhi summed it up most aptly: "He endowed the geographical description with the depth of time, and also endowed many historical events with concrete spatial realism. ""(Selected Notes on Water Classics? Notes on Shuijing is a masterpiece of ancient geography in China, covering all aspects of natural geography and human geography. In terms of physical geography, there are more than 1000 rivers, including the main stream, tributaries, valley width, bed depth, seasonal variation of water quantity and water level, sediment concentration, ice age and undercurrent, waterfalls, rapids, beaches and lakes along the river, etc., which are widely collected and recorded in detail. There are more than 500 lakes and swamps, nearly 300 springs and wells and other groundwater, more than 30 undercurrents and more than 60 waterfalls.