The Travels to the West of Qiu Changchun 长春真人西游记

Originally attributed to "Li Zhichang, the True Constant Master and disciple, narrated". Compiled in the early Yuan Dynasty (1228).

It is one volume, included in the Zhengyi Section of the Daozang.

The Travels to the West of Qiu Changchun

This book records the journey to the Western Regions of Qiu Chuji, a renowned Taoist priest of the Quanzhen Dao in the late Jin and early Yuan Dynasties, and his disciples. According to Records of Buddhists and Taoists in The History of the Yuan Dynasty: In the 15th year of Genghis Khan, the Great Ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty (1220), Qiu Chuji accepted Genghis Khan’s imperial summoning, set off from Laizhou in Shandong with eighteen disciples including Li Zhichang, and traveled to the Great Snowy Mountains in the Western Regions to meet Genghis Khan, returning to Yanjing after a four-year journey.

Based on his personal experiences and observations, the author detailedly recorded the travel routes and mileage, landscapes and geographical features, local customs and climates, languages and folk customs along the westward journey, as well as the dialogues, poems and chants between Qiu Chuji and his disciples. Therefore, this book possesses important historical value for the study of the Yuan Dynasty history, the Quanzhen Dao history, and the history of Sino-Western communications.

Scholars of the Qing Dynasty such as Xu Song, Cheng Tongwen and Dong Youcheng once textual researched the records of Western Regions' geography, climate and folk customs in this book, and modern scholars including Wang Guowei and Zhang Xinglang also wrote annotations for it.

Translations of this book into English, French and Russian are available overseas.