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

specifically, how Jia’s grand map reconfigured the vast space of the world and the empire in unprecedented ways.

Tang maps carried forward many characteristics of traditional Chinese cartography discussed earlier. Presenting geographic features of the earth, they were used as navigational and organizational tools for military and political purposes.³⁸ Evidence shows that precision was crucial to a map’s value. For instance, in Yuan Zhen’s 821 “Memorial Presenting the ‘Map of the Western and the Northern Frontiers’” (“Jin xibei biantu zhuang,” 進西北邊圖狀), he informed the emperor that his map would surpass all others of the same kind in its geographic precision. After decrying previous maps submitted to the Emperor for not being able to survive the test of field inspection, Yuan boasts with full confidence that his map “records every tiny detail and is precise down to feet and inches” (Xianhao bizai, chicun wuyi 纖毫必載, 尺寸無遺). He even suggests that the emperor summon veteran military officers to prove his work’s precision.³⁹ Elsewhere, the testimony was provided by third-party commentators, as can be seen in the following contemporary evaluation of the “Map of Chinese and Foreign Lands” in Tang huiyao 唐會要 (Institutional History of the Tang): “Someone consulted the map and asked others in his prefecture about its accuracy. They all said it was accurate and without error” (You pitu yi wenqi junren zhe, jiede qishi, wu xuci yan 有披圖以問其郡人者，皆得其實，無虛詞焉).⁴⁰ Unfortunately, because of the limited records on Tang cartography, we know very little about exactly what technologies of surveying and measurement these Tang mapmakers developed to achieve such precision.⁴¹

At the same time, Tang maps were integral to a larger enterprise of political, artistic, and religious expressions of space, and entailed active interactions with other representational modes such as landscape painting, calligraphy, and poetry. As we have discussed, the Chinese word tu had long meant picture, map, or religious chart. It also carries the meaning of “design,” “plan,” “plot,” or “enterprise,” and can be used as a verb to refer to planning, anticipating, giving thought to, or