To see the truth that his contemporaries had shunned

On April 21, 1890, Chekhov set out from Moscow on his journey to the easternmost point of Russia, 10,000 kilometers away. Why, at the age of thirty, who had just won the Pushch Prize and shot to fame in Russian literature, should he suddenly embark on the hardest and longest journey of his life? No one in his relatives or friends understood or supported him, and Chekhov himself gave different explanations to different people, which seemed to be just making excuses and prevaricating. Modern researchers have found that the idea occurred to him no later than the previous winter, when he began to gather all the data on Siberia and Sakhalin. After considerable research, Chekhov announced that he would go to Sakhalin Island to see the terminus of Russia's penal assembly line, the new colony of convicts and exiles.

His older brother and two other family members had died of tuberculosis, and his brother's death a year earlier had hit him particularly hard, causing a period of emotional and mental crisis that may have been (or may have been) the catalyst for Sakhalin's journey. Chekhov was said to have coughed up blood, but as a doctor he chose to avoid treatment, preferring to believe that the foam came from his respiratory tract rather than his lungs. It was in this condition of mind and body that he cast his eyes far to the east, to the end of the continent. As he himself wrote in letters to relatives and friends, the public interest in criminals was usually confined to the facts of the crime and the trial in court. Once the criminals had been sentenced, they disappeared from the newspapers and everyday conversation as if they had ceased to exist. Chekhov said he wanted to know the conditions of the penal colony, that is to say, he wanted to know the real face of the Penal system in Russia. He wanted to see the criminals who had been sentenced. To that end, he went on this Quixotic expedition.

Both as he prepared for his journey and as he was already on the road, Chekhov repeatedly declared that this venture might lead to nothing, that he might not write what people expected. It was clear from the outset that he had no intention of translating this experience into the novels or plays that made him famous. He had read so many accounts of his travels or expeditions to Siberia and Sakhalin, almost all of them nonfiction, that it may have influenced his stylistic and methodological writing about his own Sakhalin experiences. He wanted it to be nonfiction, nonfiction, but he didn't want to write a general account of his daily travels, because he had higher standards.

While still preparing for his journey, Chekhov found two suitable models for both travel and writing: One is Alexander von Humboldt, a great German scholar. In 1829, he traversed The Eurasian land of Russia from west to east, lasting more than half a year and traveling more than 15,000 kilometers, and then wrote the three-volume Central Asia. Humboldt's scientific spirit and working method set the best example for Chekhov's investigation on Sakhalin island.

Another example is the American George Kennan, who lived in Kamchatka and other parts of Siberia for two years from 1864 to 1865, After returning home, he wrote "Tent Life in Siberia" (1870), which is still important in Siberian ethnography, and traveled twice in Russia, once in Dagestan in the Caucasus in 1870 and once across Siberia in 1885. The latter trip brought him into contact with a large number of exiled political prisoners, who changed his view of Russian politics and made him a fierce critic of the Russian Empire. The two-volume "Siberia and the Exile System" (1891) that Kennan's last trip spawned, though published after Chekhov's Sakhalin journey, had been serialized in Century Magazine, Chekhov probably read it. Kennan's focus on the Siberian exilic system, the conditions of exiles and the management of criminals had not been openly discussed by mainstream Russian intellectuals until now. The subject itself, as well as Kennan's critical stance, may have had a profound influence on Chekhov.

So Chekhov was not going to write a travelogue, but a fieldwork centered on the life of the prisoners on Sakhalin Island. So we can understand, he is from the amur (heilongjiang) mouth of Nicholas, who is writing, from Moscow to arrive at the seashore city nearly three months, nearly thousands of kilometers between hard journey, unexpectedly completely excluded from this book, and for general writers, only part of it is enough to write a thick book. It is also understandable that Chekhov in writing, editors and publishers at the time of publication, and many readers, first, later, and even now, did not know how to place this book properly, or which book category to place it in. From the point of view of modern disciplines, there are good reasons why researchers regard this book as some kind of anthropological or ethnographic work, but clearly it is not limited to that. A recent Review in The New Yorker said the book, often mistaken for a work of medical anthropology, was in fact investigative journalism, and the greatest piece of journalism of the 19th century. There is no doubt that this cross-genre work should not be simply classified, it is the only non-fiction work of Chekhov, it cost him the most time and energy, and its multi-dimensional achievements are worthy of Chekhov's great investment.

Chekhov arrived on Sakhalin Island after crossing the Tatar Strait on July 10, 1890 on the steamer Baikal, where he lived in various locations on the island for three months (82 days, to be exact). His fame, social skills, and network of connections were of great benefit to him, enabling him, in an unofficial capacity, to be investigated by quasi-official agents with little interference and unimpeded access except to political prisoners. Like a trained expert in social surveys, he devised a simple, easy-to-use census card for interviewing nearly all convicts, exiles and settlers, claiming to have filled out tens of thousands of cards. But he said he used the cards only to formalize his research, and that his real goal was to get close enough to "open up" to hear their pain, despair and indifference. He visited all the prisons and almost all the settlements, interviewed thousands of people, visited all the medical facilities, participated in the treatment on many occasions, and witnessed the torture and execution of prisoners. He was always up at five in the morning, doing interviews during the day and organizing notes at night. The constant spasm of his eyelids caused by the intense work forced him to blink continuously. The ominous hemoptysis recurred, and, in addition, he had an unbearable headache. According to the researchers, this was linked to his later deterioration of health and early death. If that is true, then we can say that this cross-stylistic nonfiction is truly the work of my heart, the work of my life.

For those who have been exposed to Chekhov's short stories and plays first, reading this book will surprise you with his extensive use of data. What this ubiquitous, unambiguous data meant to readers at the time may be hard to fathom, but to us today it is as stark as archival data. As if to enhance the value of his scientific reports, Chekhov repeatedly transcribed official documents directly. He wanted to present sakhalin as it really was, and he wanted to show the people of The Russian heartland what it was like to be colonized by the convicts. In cold words and statistics, he describes how the system of penal exile was a failure to colonize the Far East, not only failing to achieve the goals set, but also causing a profound humanitarian disaster for all involved, from the criminals to the government officials and ordinary soldiers who managed them. Chekhov's lack of access to political prisoners is, of course, a pity, but perhaps reinforces the basic apolitical character of his work. He's dealing with convicted criminals who, legally at least, are suffering the consequences of their crimes. But criminals are people, too. Chekhov just sees them as human beings, just sees them as human beings, and reveals how anti-humane and even anti-legal the practice of imprisonment on Sakhalin Island is.