Essay on Chinese Geography | China | Geography

In this essay we will discuss about the evolution of Chinese geography.

When ideas pertaining to the geographical paradigms and models were developing in Greece and Rome, exactly at the same time, another major centre of geographic study in remote China was making rapid progress.

Essentially, the Greek and the Chinese intellectual worlds remained isolated, each discovering the other step by step. Yet there are certain fascinating parallels in concepts and methods of study that seem to require the existence of contacts, however indirect and remote.

Chinese geographical work was based on the development of methods for making accurate observation and for using these in the construction of useful theories and paradigms. The Chinese mathematicians had discovered the use of zero and had developed the decimal system, which was vastly superior to the sexagesimal system of Mesopotamia and Egypt. The decimal system was introduced in Baghdad about 800 AD from the Hindus, but the general belief is that the Hindus probably learned their decimal system from the Chinese.

The ancient Chinese scholars bad a basically different attitude towards the natural world than that held by their Greek counterparts. An individual was conceived of apart of nature. The ancient Chinese philosophers never held the teleological view and as such the Chinese believed that there was no law-giving deity who created the universe for man’s use in accordance with a pre-conceived plan.

The Chinese geography even in the ancient classical age was concerned more with observable things and processes then with the formation of theory. Here one can find a similarity with the deductive procedure of Aristotle. There are a number of weather reports, prepared on the basis of empirically observed facts, now preserved in the national archives, which probably date back to thirteen centuries before Christ.

The oldest piece of geographical writing is a survey of the resources and products of the nine provinces into which China was divided in the fifth century BC. For each province, the nature of the soil, the kinds of products, and the waterways that provide routes of transportation are described.

By the fourth century BC, the Chinese had learnt about the nature of the hydrological cycle, and the Chinese philosopher Mengtzu (Mencius), a contemporary of Plato, who lived two centuries after Confucius, developed an identical view regarding the spatial consequences of deforestation and forest cutting, and maintained that forests once cleared from mountain slopes could not re- seed themselves as long as the slopes were grazed by cattle or goats. Chang Heng, in the second century after Christ, introduced the grid system in China.

In the second century BC, the Chinese engineers made accurate measurements of the silt carried by the rivers. In AD 2, the Chinese carried out the world’s first census of population. Other technical inventions included the making of paper, the printing of books, and the use of rain and snow gauges to measure precipitation and the use of the magnetic compass for navigation. Phei Hsiu is identified as the father of Chinese cartography. In AD 267, he produced a map of politically organised part of China on eighteen rolls of silk.

To make the surveys on which the map was based, he measured several base lines and then located places distant from the baselines by the intersection of lines of sight, just as the Egyptians had done long before. Phei Hsiu made use of a grid of east and west and north-south lines crossing at right angles to provide the frame on which to plot the rivers, the coastlines, the mountain ranges, the cities and other features.

The source of his idea of using triangulation to locate places and of using a grid of lines has not been established. It can be assumed that many of the ideas of triangulation might have been devised much earlier in China and diffused westward.

The Chinese travel books, consisting of the graphics of the geographical explorations, were probably compiled sometimes between the fifth century and third century BC. The books known as the Travels of Emperor MU, who ruled from 1001 to 945 BC, were found in the tomb of a man who ruled part of the Wei valley about 245 BC.

There are evidences to show that because of the bad conditions of the books they were recopied as late as the third century BC. The books can be compared with the Odyssey of Homer, because they also reveal the story of high adventure.

There can be no doubt that at a very early date, the Chinese travellers had gone far beyond the original culture of Earth in the Wei Ho valley. The Chinese geographer Chang Ch’ien is believed to have discovered the Mediterranean civilisation in 128 BC.

His book deals with the land route across inner Asia to Bukhara and then to Persia and the Mediterranean shore. It also describes that on this route traders travelled regularly and had probably made contacts with the West long before the West was discovered.

It is interesting to note that neither Chang Ch’ien nor Hipparchus mentioned each other when the route to the Mediterranean across the Central Asiatic landmass was discovered about their time. This raises some doubts as to whether the Mediterranean civilisation was discovered by the Chinese about 128 BC.

Ancient Chinese geographers seem to have clear-cut views about nature and had a basically different attitude towards the natural world than that held by the Greeks. Ancient Chinese geography also represents two basic traditions of geographic study: the literary-historic topographic tradition, and the mathematical tradition.

While the Greek philosophers stuck to the teleological concept, the Chinese basically relied on the mechanical explanation. They preferred to formulate their concepts as generalisations of empirically observed facts. The Chinese maintained perfection in the art of map making and they developed the idea of triangulation to locate places and of using a grid of lines, probably much earlier than their Greek counterparts in the West.

The Chinese had a rich tradition in geography, and the heritage that developed in the ancient Chinese world of geographic horizon, seemed to have been passed on to succeeding scholars. The Chinese paradigm in the medieval period was also concerned more with observable things and processes and with the formulation of theory.

This is evident from the view of the Chinese geographer Shen Kua who presented an idea in 1074 about the erosion of mountain:

‘Considering the reasons for these shapes, I think that (for centuries) the mountain torrents have rushed down, carrying away all sand and Earth, thus leaving the hard rocks standing alone … standing at the bottom of the ravines and looking upwards, the cliff face seems perpendicular, but when you are on the top, the other tops seem on a level with where you are standing. Similar formations are found right upto the highest summits.’

The Chinese had a rich tradition in the art of map making which seems to have been inherited by the scholars of medieval China. Two beautiful examples of Chinese maps were carved in stone in 1137 AD based on data that probably had been surveyed before 1100.

The first map entitled ‘A Map of China and the Barbarian Countries’, shows a wider area extending from the Great Wall of China north of Peking, southward to the island of Hainanand westward to the mountains of inner Asia.

The second map, known as ‘The Map of the Tracks of YU the Great’ covers essentially the same area, but is even more accurate in showing the courses of the great -rivers and the coastline from the Gulf of Chihli, north of the Shantung Peninsula, to the island of Hainan. Both the maps were drawn with north at the top.

In medieval China, the scholars maintained the tradition of expeditions, explorations, and voyages. Two of the most distinguished medieval Chinese travellers in the seventh century were the Buddhist monks, Hsuan Tsang who reached India across the wind-swept plateau of Tibet and the world’s highest mountain; and I. Ching who in the same century reached India by sea, stopping first for eight months in Sumatra.

However, Hsuan Tsang was known as the Chinese discoverer of India. He brought with him to China a large collection of Buddhist relics and manuscripts. Chiang carried with him more than 10,000 rolls of Sanskrit Buddhist texts which he undertook to translate into Chinese.

In 1220, a Chinese crossed the deserts of inner Asia and met with the Mongol leader, Genghis Khan, in Samarkand. He described in his accounts about horse and camel mobility, of the tribesmen whom he found ruthless and cruel. Rabban Bar Sauma, a Nestorian Christian monk made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1287-88.

However, he visited Genoa, Paris and Bordeaux. He made contacts with the kings of France and England. This was several decades before similar journeys of the Polo brothers in China. In 1296, another Chinese traveller, Chou Ta-Kuan made a trip to Cambodia and prepared an account of the customs of the Cambodians.

The Chinese voyages were basically confined to South-East Asia. Seldom did they set out far into the Pacific. However, Macro Polo found Chinese sailors in the Persian Gulf port of Honnuz. One of the Chinese admirals Cheng Ho organised seven separate expeditions between 1405 and 1433.

His expeditions went to South-East Asia, Ceylon and the west coast of India in south Asia, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, and the east coast of Africa, south of the equator. He also noticed the presence of numerous native people in the equatorial Torrid Zone, which he described in his accounts. Cheng Ho also went as far as Taiwan in the east. It is even possible that he sent one of his ships to the north coast of Australia and prepared an account of his voyages.