Xiake 霞客

A travel guide organized around routes instead of destinations.

Period

Started April 2026; last updated August 2026

Status

Prototype

Tools

Next.js, TypeScript, Supabase, AMap, Mapbox, Capacitor, Claude API

Demo

xiake-six.vercel.app/discover

The idea is to plan a trip around a route rather than a single destination: a line through a region, with stops along it and a short note on what each place is and why it is worth the stop. The name comes from Xu Xiake 徐霞客, the Ming-dynasty travel writer.

The prototype has seven routes and 103 stops. Six routes go through China, from the gardens and water towns around Suzhou to the road from Yunnan into Tibet; one is a first week in New York for a new student. Each stop has a short cultural note and a place on the map.

Routes in the prototype
Route	Days	Stops
Gardens and water towns 沪苏园林古镇Shanghai, Zhouzhuang, Suzhou	3	9
Old villages of Huizhou 皖南徽州古村Huangshan, Xidi, Hongcun, Shexian	4	13
Red-brick houses of southern Fujian 闽南红砖厝Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou	5	16
The ethnic corridor of northern Yunnan 滇北民族走廊Dali, Lijiang, Shangri-La	5	15
A Tibetan loop through western Sichuan 川西藏区环线Chengdu, Danba, Seda, Daocheng Yading, Kangding	7	18
Yunnan into Tibet, by way of Medog 滇藏深度·丙察察+墨脱Dali, Bingzhongluo, Chayu, Medog, Lhasa	8	24
A first week in New York 初到纽约的第一周New York, from JFK to the Brooklyn Bridge	7	8
Total	103

Routes in the prototype

Route

Days

Stops

Gardens and water towns 沪苏园林古镇Shanghai, Zhouzhuang, Suzhou

Old villages of Huizhou 皖南徽州古村Huangshan, Xidi, Hongcun, Shexian

Red-brick houses of southern Fujian 闽南红砖厝Xiamen, Quanzhou, Zhangzhou

The ethnic corridor of northern Yunnan 滇北民族走廊Dali, Lijiang, Shangri-La

A Tibetan loop through western Sichuan 川西藏区环线Chengdu, Danba, Seda, Daocheng Yading, Kangding

Yunnan into Tibet, by way of Medog 滇藏深度·丙察察+墨脱Dali, Bingzhongluo, Chayu, Medog, Lhasa

A first week in New York 初到纽约的第一周New York, from JFK to the Brooklyn Bridge

Total

103

In August the same code was packaged as an iOS app that runs in the simulator, and a question-and-answer companion was added for each stop. It is told to answer from the route’s own notes and to say so when it does not know.

The original idea, drawing a line on a map and getting a planned trip back, is not built. The planning page in the demo still says it is coming. Whether travellers would pay for a guide like this is also still an open question. In the demo, the notes from the third stop of each route onward are blurred behind an email sign-up, left over from a pricing test in July.