Spatial Imaginaries in Mid-Tang China: Geography, Cartography, an ...

Finally, as mentioned, images are not exclusively visual but involve multisensory apprehension. The exploration of the multisensual dimensions of geographic objects is an important component of the mid-Tang literary works under discussion here. Poetry that addresses a map-reading experience may evoke a wine cup, which indicates that the comprehension of a map image could be an organic part of a social gathering, together with a banquet and the drinking of wine. Landscape essays that record the creation of new landmarks in the imperial south delineate not only the landscape in its visual aspect, but also the changing spectrums of sound, temperature, and other sensory geographies of a given site. In Yuan Zhen and Bai Juyi’s poems about their exilic experiences, the malarial air, the noise of swarming insects, and the clamorous local people represent the imperial peripheries as simultaneously dangerous and exotic. This all creates a verbal spatial imaginary that requires the reader to not only visualize the scene, but also conjure it up through his/her full sensory associations. Only then can the reader fully appreciate the spatial dimension constructed in the literary work.

Having defined the term “imaginary,” let us now move to the term “spatial.” Relating to the spatial is a set of words and notions that need to be defined: space, place, landscape and site. In my book, space serves as an inclusive concept. As such, it can be real or imagined, material or textual, literal or literary; it can entertain different scales, from the cosmos to the wall of an office. Yet it is always socially constructed and is imbued with human meanings and values. My definition is different from the conventional distinction between space and place in humanistic geography and is closer to the poststructuralist understanding of space as social construction. In humanistic geography, space is conventionally considered to be something more abstract and less defined than place. When a space is marked off and is given meaning, value, or identity, space is transformed into place.¹⁰ As Yi-fu Tuan puts it, “Compared to space, place is a calm center of established values.”¹¹ In recent decades, however, this differentiation has been sometimes confused by the idea of the social space, which stresses that space as perceived by humans is