The Art of Terrestrial Diagrams in Early China

Author:
Michelle H. Wang

Publication date:
November 23, 2023

Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract:
This is the first English-language monograph on the early history of maps in China, centering on those found in three tombs that date from the fourth to the second century BCE and constitute the entire known corpus of early Chinese maps (ditu). More than a millennium separates them from the next available map in the early twelfth century CE. Unlike extant studies that draw heavily from the history of cartography, this book offers an alternative perspective by mobilizing methods from art history, archaeology, material culture, religion, and philosophy. It examines the diversity of forms and functions in early Chinese ditu to argue that these pictures did not simply represent natural topography and built environments, but rather made and remade worlds for the living and the dead. Wang explores the multifaceted and multifunctional diagrammatic tradition of rendering space in early China.

[Dissertation] Weathering History: Storms, State, and Society in South China since the Fifth Century CE

Author:
Alejandrino, Clark L.

School:
Georgetown University

Defended:
2019

Abstract:

My dissertation looks at typhoons in the history of the richest, most populous, and most typhoon-prone province of China: Guangdong. It considers political, social, cultural, and environmental aspects of typhoons from the fifth to the twentieth century and argues that successive states and generations of Chinese that occupied the province’s littoral regarded it as a "typhoon space." The real and perceived vulnerability of the Guangdong littoral inspired efforts at community- and state-building that had many consequences. In exploring the deep consciousness of storms and the social structures they inspired in a major part of China, I will contribute to both climate history and Chinese history by reimagining the spatial frameworks within which we study human interactions with the environment.

My project takes seriously the constructed nature of the Guangdong littoral as a "typhoon space" and its location in a tropical cyclone basin, arguing that its perceived vulnerability to storms across centuries was as influential in shaping its history as was the destructive force of the storms that so often came ashore. By delineating specific spaces where climatic phenomena have a deep influence on human society and culture, my project facilitates the reimagining of China, and even the world, as consisting of discrete, but at times overlapping, climate spaces. These, crucially, would not be the same as climate regions as understood by climatologists and enshrined in countless maps. Rather, they would be based both on climatic phenomena and social, cultural, and political structures that evolved to cope with climate features. Since climate spaces do not neatly coincide with the nation, province, or other familiar spatial categories, my project invites a rethinking of space in Chinese history and more globally in environmental history. Thinking in terms of climate spaces also eases comparisons by providing a common language for speaking about similar phenomena across the globe. For example, we can think of typhoon spaces in the Western Pacific and hurricane spaces in the Caribbean as comparable "storm spaces" within a transnational history of wind, water, risk, and response. It is my hope that reimagining coastal China as a typhoon space and thinking more broadly in terms of climate spaces may serve as catalysts for advancing both global environmental history and the underdeveloped field of Chinese climate history.

Spatial Imaginaries in Mid-Tang China: Geography, Cartography, and Literature

Author:
Ao Wang 王敖

Publication Date:
August 2018

Publisher:
Cambria Press

Abstract:

This book explores a new and innovative topic—the relationship between geographical advancements in the Mid-Tang period (790s to 820s) and spatial imaginaries in contemporaneous literature. Historically and politically, the Mid-Tang period is generally considered to be a period of imperial reconstruction following the chaos of the An Lushan Rebellion (755–763), a rebellion that had a profound impact not only on the Tang empire but also on all of Chinese history. On the one hand, this era witnessed a heightened geographical awareness and a rapid development and accumulation of geographical knowledge, as was manifested in the governmental production of local map-guides and the invention of some monumental world maps. On the other hand, Mid-Tang literature represents one of the peaks of traditional Chinese literature and is known for its diversity of genres and innovative and imaginative engagement with space.

For the first time in Tang scholarship, this study identifies the epistemological and aesthetic interplay between geography and literature in medieval China and investigates how this thus-far neglected interplay shaped the Mid-Tang literary imagination. This interdisciplinary investigation uncovers a rich cultural history of human exploration of the world on both fronts and provides a fresh reading of some of the most famous works of Tang literature, for example Li He’s poetry and Liu Zongyuan’s landscape essays. This study reveals some unique phenomena in genre development and individual creation in Mid-Tang literature and deepens our understanding of the inner workings and internal drive of traditional Chinese literature in general.

This book expands and deepens the exploration of the interactions between literature and geography. Literary geography has been an active interdisciplinary field ever since the 1970s. In the early years as the field was taking shape, it was widely criticized for its instrumentalization of literary texts as unproblematic sources for empirical geographical study. In recent years, however, literary scholars have become increasingly interested in treating literary texts as another form of geography, or spatial organization, as many key literary elements, such as setting and milieu in fiction and imagery arrangement in poetry, involve spatial understanding on a fundamental level.

This study takes two important approaches regarding the ongoing debates in the field of literary geography. Inasmuch as traditional Chinese intellectual culture prioritized broad learning over specialization, disciplinary boundaries were unclear and literati were often multitalented. Accordingly, in the cases examined in this book, these literary masters were also cartographers, geographical writers, or at least experienced readers of geographical works. Therefore, the study’s approach does not treat either literature or geography as instrumental to the other, but rather examines how these two interrelated fields formed a shared intellectual horizon among the literati and found entrance to each other to create new knowledge, perspectives, and metaphors. This study also does not regard literature as a metaphorical geography in a generalized sense, but is specifically focused on how the geographic proficiency of literary authors informed their literature. Together, these two approaches suggest new possibilities of interdisciplinary exchange and offer a new perspective on the results of such exchanges as embodied in literary creation.

This book will be a welcome resource for scholars and students in Chinese literature, historical geography, cultural history, and art history.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Chapter 1. Geographical Advancements in the Mid-Tang
Chapter 2. The Big Picture: Poetic Visions and the Cartographic Eye
Chapter 3. The Shifting Shapes of the Local Sphere: Map-Guides and 
  Literary Writing
Chapter 4. Into the Deep South: The Aesthetics of New Landmark Creation
Chapter 5. Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen: The Wonder of Interactive Geography
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Traces of the Sage: Monument, Materiality, and the First Temple of Confucius

Author: 
James A Flath

Publisher: 
University of Hawaiʻi Press

Publisher:
2016

Abstract:

The Temple of Confucius (Kong Temple) in Qufu is the definitive monument to the world's greatest sage. From its humble origins deep in China's past, the home of Confucius grew in size and stature under the auspices of almost every major dynasty until it was the largest and most richly endowed temple in the Ming and Qing empires. The decline of state-sponsored ritualism in the twentieth century triggered a profound identity crisis for the temple and its worshipers, yet the fragile relic survived decades of neglect, war, and revolution and is now recognized as a national treasure and a World Heritage Site.

Traces of the Sage is the first comprehensive account of the history and material culture of Kong Temple. Following the temple's development through time and across space, it relates architecture to the practice of Confucianism, explains the temple's phenomenal perseverance, and explores the culture of building in China. Other chapters consider the problem of Confucian heritage conservation and development over the last hundred years—a period when the validity of Confucianism has been called into question—and the challenge of remaking Confucian heritage as a commercial enterprise. By reconstructing its "social life," the study interprets Kong Temple as an active site of transaction and negotiation and argues that meaning does not hide behind architecture but emerges from the circulation and regeneration of its spaces and materials.

The most complete work on a seminal monument in Chinese history through millennia, Traces of the Sage will find a ready audience among cultural and political historians of imperial and modern China as well as students and scholars of architectural history and theory and Chinese ritual.

Table of Contents:

Kong Temple as structure
Ritual as material culture
Kong Temple as space
Kong Temple and the modern politics of culture
Confucius Inc.