2 - The Visual Modeling of Space in Text and Map

Summary

Though similar in construction to landscapes, early Chinese tu were plans of definite spatial consequence, their definition resting not so much on their appearance as on their function and syntax, composed in a way that was legible and efficacious. The pacing out of the territories represented in tu likely also signaled a personal or ritual investiture. In both early Chinese landscapes and terrestrial maps, spatial representations changed across their face, of either visual vantage point or temporal relations between locales. Maps thus were prone to distortion or even falsification. Further complicating the maps’ legibility is whether their markings of human activity and construction are descriptive or prescriptive. The mensurative challenges involved in reading maps are magnified by the aesthetic conventions and features that impacted mapmaking. To best understand how such maps might have been read or deciphered would involve analyzing how they became defunct, illegible, to analyze what was regarded as an “error” in the map.