| Chapter 1: | Geographical Advancements in the Mid-Tang |
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The four centuries of unity under the Han saw significant developments in geography. The field became better defined, its works attributable to individual authors. Several chapters of Sima Qian’s 司馬遷 (145 or 135–90 B.C.) Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji 史記) offered rich, verifiable information on specific regions and the water system of the empire.15 Ban Gu 班固 (32–92), the Eastern Han historian, included a “Treatise on Geography” (dili zhi 地理志) in his Book of Han (Hanshu 漢書), thus initiating the tradition of including a dedicated geographic section in official dynastic histories. Han geography, in general, took a big step towards empiricism from the earlier geographic texts. Local customs, products, and the lineage and activities of aristocratic families were common subjects for Han geographers. In addition, regional geography during the Han Dynasty involved a strong historical component. In Ban Gu’s “Treatise on Geography,” for example, he traces the changes of names, administrative reach, and customs of many cities and regions back into archaic times. The way Han geographers composed regional geography is considered to have established the patterns for the more standardized forms of local geography that came later. These include the map-guides and later the gazetteers (difangzhi 地方志).16
The abundance of regional geographic data bolstered the development of the rhapsody (fu 賦), a major literary genre of the Han and ensuing Wei-Jin periods. Dominating the literary scene for centuries, the rhapsody is usually written in rhymed prose in which an object, feeling, or place is depicted and celebrated in exhaustive detail.17 Ban Gu himself was a renowned rhapsody writer. His “Rhapsody on the Two Capitals” (“Liangdu fu” 兩都賦) captures the splendor and richness of the two capitals of the Western and the Eastern Han, Chang’an and Luoyang. Scholars notice that Ban Gu’s rhapsodies tend toward realistic descriptions of places, and thus are distanced from the excessively lavish style of earlier rhapsody writers.18 This was only possible because of Ban’s impressive command of geographic knowledge. The realistic style of rhapsodies on place persisted into the works of the Eastern Han writer Zhang Heng 張衡 (78–139) and the Western Jin writer Zuo Si 左思 (c. 250 –c. 305). Cordell Yee points