Capital Edition of the Complete Map Based on Astronomy

Ma Junliang 馬俊良 was an official cartographer working in the imperial court in Beijing in the late eighteenth century. Here, Ma juxtaposes three different maps created during two different historical periods, forming a visual presentation of the Chinese concept of 古今 gujin, which means something like “past and present.”

The small map at the top right is the Complete Geographic Map of Mountains and Streams (山海輿地全圖 Shanhai yudi quantu), from the illustrated Sancai tuhui 三才圖會 encyclopedia of 1609, created by Wang Qi 王圻 (1529-1612). The map in the top left is the “eastern hemisphere” map from Record of Things Heard and Seen in the Maritime Countries (海國聞見錄 Haiguo wenjian lu), created by Chen Lunjiong 陳倫炯 (1703–1730) in 1730 and first printed in 1744. The two small maps at the top represent mapmaking practices of the late Ming period, dating to a time when European notions of world geography were first introduced to China.

The small maps form the 古 gu component of the paradigm while the 今 jin of the paradigm is represented by the large map below, a contemporary Chinese map of the Qing empire based on the 1767 Huang family map. This map also reflects European influences and the pressure of foreign power on the Chinese court. The three maps together, bringing the Ming worldview into juxtaposition with a contemporary Qing map, came at a time when China was again coming to terms with a largely unknown and potentially threatening world.

Ma Junliang (imperial graduate degree [jinshi] 1761) was an official cartographer working for the imperial court in Beijing in the late eighteenth century. Ma created the woodblock printed Capital edition of the complete map [based on] astronomy (Jingban tianwen quantu) during the mid-1790s. This colored copy is unusual in that most extant copies are simply black ink on paper.¹ This map was created at a time when cartographers in China, like Ma and Zhuang Tingfu (1728-1800), were reexamining historical mapping practices.² They both participate in a type of mapmaking that involves using the gujin paradigm. The binomial term, gujin 古今 means something like “past and present” and is made up of the character gu meaning an unspecified there-then and jin meaning the here-now. The two terms knit together—gujin—suggest a conversation between temporalities, whereby Chinese scholars actively joined historical events of the past to help define the present through a process of deliberate recovery and application.³ Conceptually this paradigm is also found in the blue maps and charts that specifically model and reference the 1247 map and chart.

Here, Ma Junliang juxtaposes three different maps created during two different historical periods. The small map at the top right is the Complete geographic map of mountains and streams (Shanhai yudi quantu), from Wang Qi’s (1529-1612), illustrated Sancai tuhui encyclopedia of 1609. The map in the top left is the “eastern hemisphere” map from Chen Lunjiong’s (fl. 1703-1730) Record of things heard and seen in the maritime countries (Haiguo wenjian lu), completed in 1730 and first printed in 1744.⁴ Chen’s simple schematic terraqueous map is however a direct descendent, albeit only showing the eastern hemisphere, of Zhang Hong’s (1527-1608) Complete geographical map of mountains and streams (Yudi shanhai quantu) published in his Compilation of illustrations and writings (Tushu bian) encyclopedia of 1613. The two small maps at the top (the past gu of the gujin paradigm) represent late Ming period mapmaking presentation practices created when European notions of world geography were first introduced.

The jin of the paradigm is represented by the large map below. It belongs to the Huang family lineage of Qing court map makers and derives from Huang Zongxi’s (1610-95) 1673 Map of China (Yudi quantu), amended by his grandson Huang Qianren (1694–1771) in 1767 (see entries essay, entries 3 and 7). ⁵ The date is important, for just a few years before, in 1759, Manchuria, Mongolia, Tibet, and Chinese Turkistan were finally brought under Qing rule. Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-96) appointed officials from the Manchu administrative units called banners, as well as local political figures, to supply statistics about their administrative districts.⁶ That information was compiled by Huang Qianren and published as a multi-colored woodblock-printed map in 1767 with the title All under heaven map of the everlasting unified Qing empire (Daqing wannian yitong tianxia quantu), the same map that was a source for the blue terrestrial map. Ma presents his version of the Huang family map on the Jingban tianwen quantu as a contemporary Chinese map of the Qing empire. Ma’s map connected the “then and now” visually, looking to the past to find accessible historical maps that matched and helped explain the changed circumstances of the present. European mapping practices introduced in the early seventeenth century, were again in the 1790s being introduced when a European presence was pressing again in the Chinese court. The three maps together, two from the late Ming that were being revisited, are juxtaposed with an indigenous Chinese map at a time when Qing China was coming to terms with a largely unknown and potentially threatening world.