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

it in the mid-Tang map culture, along with the map-guides, and Li Jifu’s Maps and Treaties of the Provinces and Counties of the Yuanhe Reign.

Geography and Literature before the Mid-Tang

In Chinese history, the field of geography is most commonly referred to as dili 地理, which literally means the patterns/principles of the earth. By the Tang, the notion of dili had evolved to an inclusive intellectual rubric through which to observe spatial patterns of nature, customs, politics, and so on.¹ In its inception in archaic times, geographic work, although appearing to delineate patterns in the terrain of the physical world, is in fact best described as a mixture of observation, fantasy, and philosophical conceptualization of inhabited and uninhabited spaces. A fictional journey, a mixture of real and imaginary geographic features, and the imposition of a conceptual world model onto the known world—these narrative and fictional elements are commonly seen in early Chinese geographic works. If we consider narrative and fictionality as key elements of literature, then early Chinese geographical work also exhibits literary quality. With their authors and dates of production untraceable or in debate, it is hard to identify these works’ immediate influence on contemporary literary production. Nevertheless, these geographic texts and visual representations became long-lasting sources of reference and inspiration for later intellectual production, especially in terms of a sense of space and an understanding of the world.

“Tribute of Yu” (Yugong 禹貢), a chapter in the ancient classic Book of Documents (Shangshu 尚書), is widely acknowledged as the classical text that marked the inceptive moment of Chinese geography. Likely written in the Warring States period, the work divides the heartland of China into “Nine Provinces” (jiuzhou 九州) and organizes the whole world into “Five Zones of Submission” (wufu 五服). The Nine Provinces are demarcated along natural components like mountains and rivers and are defined by distinctive geographic features and special local products, such as agricultural products, leather, feathers, and so on. The system of