Beijing to Amur: A 4-border sphere in literature of exiles in Qing NE China

Northeast China was a land of exiling guilty officials and intellectuals during Qing Dynasty. The exiles’ journey was always started from Beijing, the capital city of the empire, and ended at either Liaodong or Ningguta. Qihua/Chaoyang Gate on the city wall of Beijing signposted the starting point of the journey, bordering the royal court and outer realm of the emperor, whereas Shanhaiguan Pass on the Great Wall and Yingge Pass on the Willow Palisade symbolised the border of Central Plains and the rim of Junxian system. Finally, the Amur region, as a state border agreed in international treaties, depicted the limit of the whole empire. The exiles wrote numerous poems and lyrics about their journey and lives related to these four borders, representing a complicated consciousness of Northeast China a territorial sphere. The consciousness was, to a large extent, a hybridity of Han Chinese-centrism, primitive thinking of the frontiers, Hua-Yi dichotomy, and Chinese dynastic historiography. This text-based study intends to explore this four-border sphere as a cultural and political construction, and further investigate the exiles’ cognition of border, territory, state polity and beyond. Specific imagery on the exiles’ journey and their lives in Northeast China will be also analysed, to deepen the understanding of their cognition.

About the Speaker

Tianshu Liu is a doctoral researcher in human geography at the University of Manchester. His research expertise concentrates on the historical geography of China and geopolitics in modern East Asia. He is particularly interested in the transformation of China’s geographic knowledge from dynastic history to modern context. His work takes a critical perspective on issues of evolution of China as a state through early modern history, borderlands of China in modern East Asian geopolitical arena and interactions between Chinese/East Asian political traditions and European influences via the lens of geographic studies.

Notes

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