Chia-yung Leu 2009 Cartography And Making Place

Cartography as the mediator of making place: the emergence of Matzu Islands on the Chinese maps 呂嘉耘 Chia-Yung Leu 台灣大學人類系研究生 National Taiwan University Department of Anthropology Abstract Using the Matsu Islands as a case study, this paper discusses how modern cartography functioned as an important mediator in enabling the administrative power in the late Qing to govern the coastal area of Southeast China. This power rested on the ability of cartography to transcend local perspectives and created a common denominator for communication and rational governance. The paper shows that before the Opium War (1839-1842) only master sailors had the knowledge to recognize and denominate the important islands and their relative positions in the Southeast coast of China. Since their knowledge was stored and communicated through local dialects, this created confusion among maritime officials. Although Imperial China installed navy and customhouses as the governing agencies for maritime order, the Imperial government was illequipped in handling the local naming of the shipping routes and transfer nodes of the goods. However, during the Opium War, English cartographers charted maps of the Southeast coast of China and plotted details about islands and the relative distances between each. The maps provided not only the international traders but also the Qing officials with essential information about resource distribution and helped them in policy-making. Aside from local governance, cartography has created clear-cut administrative boundaries between local government units and, more importantly, a sense of national sovereignty. Key words: Southeastern China, Matsu Islands, Place, Modern Cartography, Local Knowledge

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Introduction The map is an important tool for the Chinese empire in visualizing the domain under its control. Scholars have discussed the use of maps from an imperial perspective. However, the knowledge of the local people about their environment and landscape was often not preserved in the form of maps, but as secret knowledge passed orally. Therefore, local governments could not rely on the official map, which was often imprecise for effective governance. The discrepancy between the official geographical knowledge and that of the local people’s knowledge about the landscape gave the locals an upper hand when evading government control. This was most apparent in the coastal regions where the official map often had vague and inexact details about the distance between islands and sea routes. However, the situation changed after the introduction of modern cartography by the West in the 19th century1. The spatial representation of the modern map indicating the exact distance and geographical distribution greatly facilitated the late imperial governance in the control of coastal regions. In this article, I use the historical texts aided by my ethnological investigation of the Matsu Islands to illustrate the process of how the modern cartography of the Chinese southeast coast gradually became fixed. Matsu The Matsu Islands (Ma tsu lie dao, 馬祖列島) is a minor archipelago composed of 19 islands about 10 miles off the coast of Fuzhou of mainland China in the Taiwan Strait. It is now under the effective control of the Republic of China. Administratively, it belongs to Lienchiang County (連江縣) in Fujian Province. However, it was not known as a series of islands in the official map prior to the late 19th century. Since the islands were relatively unimportant, the historical record of this region is few, only several port names were mentioned on the official maps. For the average Taiwanese, the name of the islands is often linked to the goddess Mazu (the Holy Mother of Heaven Above or tian shang sheng mu, 天上聖母) because of their similarity in sound. As a matter of fact, the term Matsu was named after a port (Ma Au in Fuzhou dialect) in Nangan, the largest island in the archipelago. The islanders also refer to themselves as “Ma-au luin”(馬澳人), which to outsiders mean “the people of the Ma port.” Nevertheless, the association to the goddess Mazu gives a sense of prestige and is often mentioned in the discussion of the place name. 1

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The modern cartographic technology and its products were introduced into China at 16 century and known by Chinese officers at the same time. But modern cartography served as the practical tool of Chinese empire was not until the Opium War happened. Why China “held back” its knowledge from grasping efficient control tool such as modern cartography is discussed in Yee(1994), which indicated two main reasons. One is that the Chinese officers often looked down upon the modern cartography, took it as a form of geographic representation not as a way led toward authentic geographic knowledge, another is the local officers and local people mostly resisted any kinds of new measure because new norms usually brings new restrictions into local society.

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It is not possible to match all 19 islands with the place names in the official historical texts. We can correlate the limited number of place names (about 14 to 202, often port names) in the texts based on homophonic to the present day map. An island may have several ports. The exact number of islands indicated in the texts is nine3. In earlier sailing guides, the place names were often used as navigation indicators, such as upper and lower Gung-tong (the Hollow of Cogongrass 竿塘, now called Nangun 南竿 and Beigan 北竿), Tung-yin-shan (the mount Eastern Gush 東湧山 now called Yungyin 東引), and Tung-sha (the Eastern Shoal 東沙 now called Tungjyu 東莒). The first record marked the port name of “Matsu” in “the Inscribes after the Inspection of Kwangtung and Fujian” (粵閩巡視紀略) (1683), which was written after the Qing conquered Taiwan. There are also local stories about how the goddess Mazu came into the place-naming process. In Matsu Islands’ oral tradition, the Mazu temple at the Ma port is said to be the oldest Mazu goddess temple in China. In a local legend, after Lin Moniang (Mazu's mortal name, 林默娘) tried to save her father and brother in a shipwreck, her sacrificed body (shen ti, 身體) 4 flowed to the Ma port and became stuck in the port. Today, the Mazu temple of the Ma port proclaims its superiority over the rest of the Mazu temple for it is where the tomb containing the body and clothes of the goddess lies5. Other than the practical place name facilitating navigation, historical incidence and local legends were an integral part of the geographical knowledge of the people. This essay takes Matsu Islands as an example to show that the category of “Matsu” did not occur naturally, but from political decisions assisted by technology such as modern cartography. In ancient China, the knowledge about the sea was exclusive to the locals, and administrators could hardly adopt those practical knowledge. In contrast, the modern cartography introduced into China by the late 16th century was adopted by the Imperial officers at 19th century and became widely used as a tool for objectifying and managing local places. The Pieces of Toponyms The existence of ancient Chinese official maps demonstrates an important aspect of traditional Chinese administrative coastal control, that is, the Chinese officers at that time only held administrative power in name. For example, the first island in Matsu Islands mentioned in official records or map was not until 17th century: the Turtle Island (Gui yu 龜嶼) near Beigan, appeared on 2

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This identification is based on the 李仕德(2006:75) who compared the place names recorded in “the Inscribes after the Inspection of Kwangtung and Fujian” (粵閩巡視紀略)(1683)and modern maps. Source is as above.(李仕德, 2006: 63-91) It's a wide spread taboo of coastal Chinese not to directly mention words about death and corpse, since the careless words might bring bad luck to the residents. Under the ROC religion regulations from 1980s, any folk temple must fund a Committee to deal with every religion issues from making speech to preparing local ceremonies.

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the map of Zheng He's mission (Zheng he hang hai tu 鄭和航海圖), which was made in 1619. At that time, those “islands” were just recorded without detail and comment, which means the Chinese navy had no control over them that time. To illustrate the meaning of remote islands in the Chinese administrative view, Figure B shows a depiction of what is called “Map of naval defenses across miles” (Wan li hai fan tu 萬里海防圖), which was created around 1552-1561. This map had been introduced by Yee (1994) in his book to show the dominance of traditional Chinese cartography before the late Qing dynasty. In Chinese cartographic sense, the use of scenographic brushwork showed the map of the world rendered from a China-centric perspective, with its symbolic power stretching out across miles. On the map, the description box on the top-left reflects the dangerous border conditions prevailing at that time. The following section presents the beginning paragraph:

March & April, comes the southeast wind on the sea of Fuchow, and the barbarians' ships would come from Kwangtung into Fujian. they are from the Sea of South, the Running Horse River.

Fu yang san si yue dong nan feng xun, Fan chuan zi yue qu min ru, yu hai nan qi shi fa yu Zou-ma-shi.

And the wicked bandits will adjoin each other at the frontiers, (we) would better arrange sentry at Tong-shan and xuan-zhong, and the bandits can not berth but remain out of land.

Er jian tu jiao jie zhi shen, yi yu fu hai tong-shan xuan-zhong deng shao bing shou zhi. ze zei bu de bo bi pao wai.6

After the exposition above, the author wrote a map description detailing coexisting coastal naval defense spots, most of which are large islands (e.g., Kin-men 金門) or important sentry sites near the port, such as Tung-shan and Xuan-zhong. The place names mentioned on the map can be classed into two kinds, depends on their comparative familiarity with the sovereignty. The fixed names on the mainland were easier to mark out or to send officers to survey, because their relative importance of its economical or martial utilities. Which means, the ports with plenty import and export that could levy tax or easier to guard were much important than poor and uncontrollable fishers' villages, and the latter could only have pale record on local texts. The much insignificance places were the numerous written island names that were relatively dispersed and randomly floating in the sea. In the Matsu Islands example, although the names did not appear, the island members at that time consisted of several names of places scattered in the sea, and there are four island names sketched as little spots on the picture. The names of places came from two main information sources: ancient Chinese geographical writings and local written records. In ancient China, the scholarship practice of Ti-li (地理) combined geographical notions and the skill of critically interpreting the ancient texts. Through the Ti-li practice, most of the naming on the map from the texts matched the information found in travel books, classical writings in 6

The original text in Chinese: 福洋三四月東南風汛,番船自粵趨閩入于海南,其始發於走馬溪,而奸徒交接之先,宜 于附海銅山玄鐘等哨兵守之,則賊不得泊必拋外。

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geography, and existing local records (王成組, 1988). Traditional cartography practices have tried to create a pictorial representation of the notions associated with an ideal, ancient, and orderly China. Therefore, the whole map image had shown the relative distance between controllable and incontrollable places and their relation with the ideal Chinese “Central” (zhong, 中). The governable places included information on defensive strategy; however the untamed areas only had names (Yee, 1994). Apart from the texualized information above, local residents also served as contemporary geographic informants. Since the Chinese Navy was too ineffective in surveying the coastal area by itself, it often forced all the legal merchants' ships to hand in their sailors' guides (Hang hai zhen fa, 航海針法) to the navy office as local control measures. Those guides were used to examine the merchant-trading routes and served as sources of basic data to predict the activities of the merchants. Although the administrations could exact and keep as many copies of different sailors' records and place names as they could, they could only read the textual messages and the surface meaning. The bureaucrats could not, however, interpret or use these information because of the language barrier set by the dialect-based place naming used by local sailors and merchants. By looking at the map in Figure B, we can obtain brief information regarding the primary cartographic aim of peripheral China. Given that there were no real control measures prevailing in those remote places, the insignificant toponyms found on the map had rather symbolical meanings than actual deeds. Those place names signified the Chinese frontier and the sphere of Chinese influence, indicating that they should be slightly mentioned and not the details about these. As border ports or small islands, they are good hiding places for smugglers; yet, the navy seldom really patrolled them. In other words, the inability of the actual state to defend its coasts showed on the pieced-up naming and poor drawing information. Furthermore, we can observe that the map issues not only present the deficiency of governance or the seeming illusion of a unified China, but also the potential local agency. From the coastal residents' position, the out-of-sight situation means they could achieve much more autonomy. Although they should reserve the guides to the officers, they could live freely on the border area and do almost everything they wished to do, as long as they could keep their secrets in their riddle-like dialect sailing formulas. The Geographic Rhymes The southeast coastal region of China includes many small islands and poor farming lands. Unlike the farmers of the interior area, the coastal people do not have much land to farm, more so the ability to obtain lands of their own. As a result, the coastal areas became full of people without 5

immovable property. They frequently moved to earn a living. Those floating residents who lived here could only work on dry farmlands or seek opportunities to survive, including legal acts such as grouping together to fish, or illegal activities such as small-scale trade. In most cases, they can get some reward from being the accomplices of smugglers. The “unsettled” character of these people will take an important role in the subsequent discussion. As mentioned above, the people living in the coastal area were usually involved in smallscale trades involving businesses requiring clevernesses and few formal knowledge to maintain. Due to their economic status, the coastal people of course had no cash capital to put up a business, but only possessed knowledge about the sea which was crucial for the business. The locals tend to find ways to escape the trade taxes in order to escape the control of administrative power, and their knowledge of the sea played an important role which helped them to do just that. As Alfred Gell showed in “How to Read a Map: Remarks on the Practical Logic of Navigation” (1985), the sailors who lacked a textual record had their unique mapless practical mastery to rely on. His observation did not only apply to the sailing practice of Micronesia, but also to the Chinese seamen. The "practical mastery" of the environment consists of owning full knowledge of what the environment looks like from all available points of view. Thus, the practical method of seeking information was carried out as follows: the sailor identified his position by matching the landscape image which opened up around him with a previously memorized image. To proceed toward a selected destination, a sailor moved so as to create around himself a chain of linked landscape images corresponding to an image of a higher order. It extended in time as well as in space, which in a nutshell is "the view throughout the journey from A to B." The sequence of landscape images formed a series of sub-goals which were reinforced if the journey was successfully accomplished, and then extinguished if it was not. In this manner, one can perform the daily method of finding a location without using a map at all. Since then, we can mark off two kinds of geographical knowledge: the practical way-finding method based on images reinforced by habit and familiarity and the technical way-finding method based on maps and algorithms. In my fieldwork, the Matsu islanders now no longer sail as far as older generations because of the separation of cross-straits relation between ROC (The Republic of China) and PRC (the People's Republic of China). But the sailors still often boat around the islands they lived on and the craft of sailing is still maintained with their keen senses and daily sailing practice. At my fieldwork islands of Tungjyu and Seijyu, there are 68 place names around the 13.2Km Tungjyu coastline and 34 around Seijyu's 7.9Km coastline. All of these place names are dialect toponyms and are mostly used to navigate. Most of them are named by their shape similes—shallow ports may look like horns (Hi gi 犀犄) from the sea, a cape sticking out may look like the nose of a rhino (Hi nu pi 犀牛 6

鼻), or a cock (Ge ga pi 雞角鼻) depending on whether the figure is blunt or sharp. The place names can be remembered and serve their function when they are connected in a route formula, indicating the sailing route around the island. Since the inshore sea is full of hidden reefs, it is advised that only fixed routes should be followed so the boat can safely pass through. With the many formulas a sailor needs to memorize and use, the sailor is often praised for being skillful and wise. The sailing technology is kept alive by his keen senses in his daily boat rowing combined with the sailing formula and taboos his father and brother gave him. His knowledge of the sea is constructed on his local inheritance and intimate experience like identifying the islands' forms, the sense of different tides and the touch of canoe rudder. Under the same rule, the ancient sailors were must guided by their senses and oral instructions. More so, from the trivial historic collection of local sailing formula we can read how the ancient Chinese seamen found their way on the open sea beyond the coastal region. There were three information elements in the Chinese seamen sailing guide sentences: direction, distance between different territorial “nodes,” and the names of the indicative site. The Chinese mariners' compass marked the directions in two-dimensional coordinates through StemsBranches signs (Gan zhi, 干支), in which each zhi was subdivided by a 1/12 round angle, and the gan minced the zhi. The distance measurement unit on the sea was geng (更), which in daily life was a time unit. In the maritime field, the geng metonymy referred to the approximate distance the ship could sail in a time unit geng. The Stems-Branches signs were widely used in indicating directions and also the geng distance unit, only the place names could be varied because there were sailors from different dialects, and different dialects could produce toponomies that only its users could understand. While the map shown on Figure B shows the view of the Imperial-oriented “Central” (zhong, 中), the one on Figure C shows not only the administrative intention but the subjective narratives of the local residents. The local sailing guides were kept through non-textual methods. For instance, the guides were recited in a rhyming cadence, and the sentence lengths were bounded in a poetic form. In Figure C, as an example, the map named the “Route that Compass Needled” (Zhen lu tu, 針路圖) was collected by the Qing naval officer Xu BaoGuang (徐葆光) in his voyage writing Sending to Zhong-Shan (Zhong shan chuan xin lu, 中山傳信錄) which came out in 1719. The information was remembered by the sailors in oral rhymes or manuscripts instead of a picture, although Xu portrayed the sailing guide in a pictorial form. This sailing route began in Fuchow, the capital of Fujian Province (福州), to Okinawa (琉球). Outside the Tong-sha choose -30˚ sail 10-Gengs see the Mount

Tong-sha wai qu dan-Chen zhen shi-Geng qu Kee-Long-Shan-Tou,

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Kee-long, from the Mount Kee-long choose -7.5˚ then 0˚ sail 10-Gengs see the Diaoyutai, from Diaoyutai choose 0˚ sail 4-Gengs see the Island Yellow-Tail,

zi Kee-long-tou yi-Mao zhen dan-Mao qu shi-Geng zhen qu DiaoYu-Tai, zi diao-yu-tai dan-Mao zhen si-Geng qu Huang-Wei-Yu,

from the Yellow-Tail choose 7.5˚ sail 10-Gengs see the Island Red- zi Huang-Wei-Yu jia-Mao zhen shi-Geng qu Chi-Wei-Yu, Tail, zi Chi-Wei-Yu yi-Mao zhen liu-Geng qu Gu-Mi-Shan, from the Island Red-Tail choose -7.5˚ sail 6-Gengs see the Mount zi Gu-Mi-Shan dan-Mao zhen qu Ma-Che-Shan, Kumejima, jia-Mao ji jia-Yin shou ru.7 from Mount Kumejima choose 0˚ see the Mount Horse Teeth, take 7.5˚ and 22.5˚ then sail into the port.

This route mentioned in many maps and sailing guides from the 15th to 19th century, and this map was a combination of both and widely used to show the ancient Chinese intelligence. The map showed the intelligence of whom collect the sparse data and pictured it, and the wisdom of undescribed local people. The words marking the route direction were the levied sailing guides, while the pictures were made by the naval office. The writing structure of the sailing guide states that, “When one leaves port A, one should sail toward X direction in T1 time, then see the I1 island, turn to the Y direction sail for T2 time, and then you could see the I2 island, then turn to Z direction” and so on. With this formula, the sailor can thus sail and arrive at the destination. The principle of using these textual guidances seems easy, but it was almost unreadable to those who were non-natives since the important information (such as the place names) were stored and communicated through local dialects. This, of course, created great confusion among maritime officials. In addition, there were people who are good at reading and memorizing those sailing formulas, the master sailors (Huo Zhang, 火長). Before the mid-19th century, only master seamen had the know-how to recognize and denominate the important islands and their relative positions on the sailing routes in the southeast coast of China. When the officers needed to sail to another place such as the mission of Zheng He and Xu BaoGuang, the voyages could be no possible done without the local assistance. Though the local help was essential, it was rarely organized into local administration, for the master sailors were mostly bound in the local context, and the officials often failed to recruit them into the Chinese navy. As such, without sufficient practical knowledge and external help, the naval control could hardly serve an effective function. Although Imperial China established the navy and local customhouses as the governing agencies for maritime order, the Imperial government was illequipped in handling the local using of the shipping routes and transfer nodes of the goods. The locals could run their “illegal” business as well, and the government could only catch them redhanded when there was a traitor in the local groups or with coastal dwellers help from another 7

東沙外取單辰針十更取雞籠山頭,自雞籠頭乙卯針單卯針十更取釣魚台,自釣魚台單卯針四更取黃尾嶼,自黃尾 嶼甲卯針十更取赤尾嶼,自赤尾嶼乙卯針六更取姑米山,自姑米山單卯針取馬齒山,甲卯及甲寅收入。

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place. For there were education-imposed seaside cities or villages such as Kin-men, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou, the government set imperial examination made the people who can understand the local dialect to be the local officers. But the total coastal governance might not improve greatly only by the staffing without efficient and skillful naval troops. There are two confrontational knowledge practices: the local knowledge preserved in people's oral and daily practice versus the Imperial territorial authority representation. As I showed, the local intimate knowledge not only helped local people earn their living, but also kept them out of the administrative watch, for there was no other way that the administrators can recognize and handle those areas as well. Moreover, the officers should ask the locals’ favor when they had to voyage across the sea. On the contrary, The Empire satisfied with their symbolic imperial influence and kept no detailed information but rough local records about the peripheral places because at that time the border spaces were not “places” to use or politically operate, but were only scattered place names on the pale maps or records. For the reason above, the official record oftentimes visualized its imaged of a “whole China” in a painted work that was not to scale but asserted the imperial power. Only the new technology of marking and making a place could change the primal governmental-local balance, for the old “place” relation was maintained by the Imperial ignorance and the inability to control. However, when the government found the power of science and seized the technology to scale down its “own” land, the local businesses could no longer run smooth as before. The Modern Maps The modern cartographic technology was transmitted to China from the West by the middle 16th century by the priest of Society of Jesus, but it was not applied to Chinese coastal area until the mid-19th century, when the late Qing Chinese frontier defense notion was mostly razed by the invasion of the Western colonial military forces. From the Chinese officers' view, the scientific technologies were thought to be the most powerful weapon of the Westerners. The turning point was the Opium War. In 1842, the British navy sent cartographic technicians to the southeast China’s coast and detailed every trivial submerged rock and island. In the same year, after the Opium War, the diplomatic relationship between the Chinese government and foreigners was reestablished through the Treaty of Nanjing (南京條約). The very point of the treaty allowed the five Chinese ports to open for trade, namely, Canton (Shameen Island until 1949), Amoy (Xiamen until 1930), Fuchow (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo), and Shanghai (until 1949), where Britain was to allowed to trade with anyone they wished. After its defeat, adopting Western technologies into Chinese usage became the important 9

issue in the government and in social discourses. Associated with the translation and introduction of other countries, the study of neighboring countries and the Chinese Imperial peripheries were concluded and accompanied by modern map making (郭雙林, 2003). The “scientific” maps were good for administrative or martial usages because their pictorial messages were presented in the scale-down style. Given that modern cartography treats every land equally without discrimination, any tiny piece of land should be mentioned on the map. The Matsu islands first appeared as a cluster on 19th century English maps. The China Sea Directory (1873) was then published by the Hydrographic Office of the British Admiralty. The map defined the nearby islands as one cluster; at present, the Matsu islands have now been divided into three clusters. These maps were translated into Chinese by 1899 and then published openly and used widely by the population along with other contemporary modern maps. By comparing those maps, the differences between the Chinese Imperial geographic idea and the local and modern cartographic concepts will appear. In the traditional Chinese version, when the representative maritime technology was inadequate, most of the sea knowledge came from the local residents. Moreover, when the Chinese government sent an envoy abroad—such as the two officers mentioned above —the officers must hire a great number of local sailors because the practical sailing knowledge comprised the only reliable naval knowledge at that time. The knowledge of maps served another purpose. Since the map must work for the interests of power, its influence and impact were quite different. The map of course does not present a realistic picture, but they present and naturalize the authors' emphases, namely, the fixed place names and boundaries, the routes, and their functions as military bases. In the traditional Chinese map, it could represent the ambition of Chinese control and also show the government’s inability to really access a remote place; for instance, the officers could only obtain the scattered place names. When the administrator became equipped with the modern maps, they could really “map out” the places and let the map serve the needs of an expanding empire’s military force as well as establish Qing territorial claims (Hostetler, 2001). In practice, once the island groups were identified, they could not only be named and fixed on the map, but their relative positions also revealed and sovereign operations enabled. This means that cartography is not only a technology of pictorial representation, but is also a tool which can reveal prevailing military plans or social control during the time of a map’s creation. Take the lighthouses located at Don-Chun and the Don-In for example. Currently, the Don-Chun and Don-In separately refer to the northernmost and southernmost island of Matsu Islands. When Fuchow became the main gateway to foreign boats, the two lighthouses were made during the19th century after the Opium War to be the guide marks of Fuchow. Although there are many reefs and islets 10

around Fuchow, not all of them had equal importance, only those with functional landmarks, economically abundant, or located on a strategic position had more political meaning. Since the meaning of a certain place is normally derived from various political acts, the naming of a place is continuous, and the meaning of that geographic area constantly changes through time. Conclusion: Technology and Control After several defeats by “Western” technology, the harsh task of the 19th century Qing government was how to adopt those technologies. The purpose to adopt was an important political concern. On one hand, they were using technology to defend the border area from the foreigners. On the other hand, they are using it to increase local control. Take southeast coastal China for example, those territories were only remote places when the Chinese government knew too few and controlled too few there. However, with the modern map, the officers could really distinguish and record the local condition without local knowledge. The government could produce new territorial marks and measures for their administrative purposes, and the actions produced new places and spacial categories unprecedented: harbors for foreign trade, more lookout stations monitoring smuggles or subdividing local administrative units. The “places” in any agency's notion would never be “new”, for the linguistic spacial impression can be confirmed by the new pictorial media without reception contradiction. Since then, the new geographical technology was not only introduced into China to make novel Western maps to please the officers' curiosity, but also to reproduce real social spaces and mediate government power for the locals. With the clarity of sailing technology and maps, the Chinese navy might not conquer foreign fleets, but it could reinforce the coastal administration. Although the peripheral area of eastern China knew the imperial from their estranged ties with the government, the increasing administrative control and the decrease of local agency may not be immediately noticed or even resisted by the locals because the control power was accompanied with property and communal protection in the chaos of the late Qing era. As the example shows below, only when the late Qing had extended its administrative power across the sea did the locals seek its help to reconcile disputes or to protect the area. There were several historic monuments at Matsu Islands showed the intermittent imperial activities: two 19th century lighthouses, one Da-pu Stele (Da pu shi bei, 大埔石碑) after the legend of a successful pirate captured in 1617. And two steles named “the Announcement by the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang” ( min zhe zong du gao shi, 閩浙總督告示) in 1869 (Fig. E), as indicated in the epitaph paraphrased:8 8

兵部尚書兼都察院右都御史總督福建浙江等處地方軍務兼理糧餉鹽課「英」為愷切曉諭事。照得沿海漁戶 出洋採捕,向應以何處之船佩何處之鹽,不容紛爭。前据福建沿海道詳据連幫商陳建豐具稟:「援引《鹽法志》

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Ying, the Minister of war, the Right-Side-Censorate Governor of local military affairs, grain tax salary and salt issues at Fu-Jian and Zhe-Jiang pertinent announced. When the coastal fishermen need salt to preserve the fishes, they should by the salt from the officially allocated traders. Though the Lian-Jian salt trader Chen Jianfeng argued that the Chang-Le fishers should buy his salt while the fishers were at the outer sea of Lian-Jian, the government judged by the legal precedent, and reject the trader Chen's purpose. Not only the precedent mentioned above, the nearby Bao Head Chen and fisher Lin accused the trader Chen's act is an offense against the existing law. Now the Imperial Agency has the sentence. All the salt traders and fishermen noticed that, the Chang-Le fishers should buy your salt from Chang-Le. The other traders and smugglers should not racketeer or hardsell the fishers. Once the kinds of illegals emerged, our office will deal with them according to law.

The announcement was carved to arbitrate the dispute between salt middlemen, declare the indefinite salt monopoly policy, and warn the local residents not to smuggle salt. Although the Chinese officers could not monitor the salt issue all the time, the enhanced administrative measures —the reinforced bao jia system, the denunciation, and the certification mechanism—helped the monopoly inspection considerably. The sudden appearance of a governmental announcement at such a seashore village was an indicator that the government had kept an eye here, especially the epitaph sail, not only as a display of Qing strength, but as a detailing of local affairs. In addition, what enabled the provincial officers to write those descriptions was because the local information was no longer just exclusive to the locals. The “local knowledge” we anthropologists often talk about is contrasted with the “foreign” scientific knowledge. The important feature in the geographic understanding that made the local knowledge different from the scientific knowledge is the intimacy between persons and the place. The local residents practice their notion of coastal knowledge everyday, they feel and memorize the local place with their intimate life experience. Their close relations with their dwelling place gave them an advantage over the traditional local officers since the locals were more familiar with the local place compared to “foreign” and remote administrators. The local residents could run whatever business they liked, until the government seized the power of modern technology of 開載嘉慶年間,前鹽道案以長樂漁戶在連江洋面採捕,應令就連幫配鹽」等情。本部堂查漁配章程,續於道光二 十二間,由尋鹽道詳經前代辦督部堂□曾批飭:「應照何章何處之船配何處之鹽,不准混就漁捕,地方配銷自應 循照辦理,不容藉志舊案混行爭執。」分晰批飾。嗣据該甲長陳承福等,漁戶林迎士等呈控:「連江幫商陳建 豐得強勒令在連配鹽,請轅示禁。」又經批:「道出示,禁止勒配」各在案。今復据甲長、漁戶等具呈:「以現 在漁汛已屆□□□百計指延」等情,殊屬藐玩。并据長樂梅花樸戶黃連三赴轅,呈請「出示分別曉諭,就籍配鹽」 等情:自應准予已出示,分別曉諭,禁止俾乘時就籍配鹽、出洋釣捕,免誤汛期；并聽勒石永禁,杜絕爭端。除呈 批示外,合行出示曉諭。為此,示佈各商幫、漁戶人等知悉:凡爾等籍籍隸長樂各漁船,務須就長樂本籍埠館照 例配鹽出洋,照常赴長岐、橋仔等處採捕,不得買私□配；爾長樂埠所伴人等務須循照舊章授配,不得索擾阻撓 致誤漁訊。倘連幫商哨敢再堅執志載舊索,恃強勒令,在於連江重配,任意需索阻撓,許該漁戶人等据實告,以憑 究辦。本部堂令出維行,其各凜遵,切勿以身試法。凜之！示遵！右諭通知。同治捌年玖月拾肆日給長岐澳勒 石永遠示禁 （the periods and the commas were made by 王花悌 of the Matsu folklore culture museum）

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mapping. There are no geographical “facts” that can escape the modern cartographic gaze because the technology treats their information with standard observation protocols, and the aim of the visualization process is to make geographical information easy to read and ready for use, even for the reader who has never been to any place on the map. Armed with the new observatory technology, the Chinese government no longer needs the local assistance to sail or to control. The local knowledge lost its advantage. Moreover, since the “modern” technology is easier to learn, the locals often turned their effort toward learning the new way of sailing, and the intimate knowledge of the sea gradually became a minor and regional notion of coastal space. The local knowledge is no longer a dominated and exclusive concept for the local place. The technological shift of map making leads to the making of a different “place.” The traditional Chinese government made maps by their need to claim their right over the entirety of “China.” The Imperial ambition is not really “subdued” everywhere, not to in mention the peripheral and often mythologized places such as the Chinese-defined “frontier” places. The dependability of modern cartography cannot only apply to the known places such as affluent Central China, but also the formerly unclear remote places. The 19th century Chinese officers eager to learn more about the whole world through modern maps, tellurions, and translated travel books also tried to describe their territory in this new Western manner. In contrast, modern cartography locates earlier unclear places into scaled-down images, and the new geographical information could be proven by the trivial ancient writings that the Chinese administrators could quickly identify where their power could reach. Take southeastern coastal China for example, this territory was only a remote place when the Chinese government knew too few and had little control there. However, with the modern map, the officers could really distinguish and record the local condition without the local knowledge. The government could produce new territorial marks and measures for their administrative purposes, and the actions in turn produced new places and spacial categories unprecedented: harbors for foreign trade, more lookout stations monitoring smuggles, or subdividing local administrative units. The places which had never been seen before were ascertained with the old Chinese notion of geographic knowledge and readied for contemporary use. The places in any agency's notion would never be “new” because the linguistic spacial impression can be confirmed by the new pictorial media without reception contradiction. The new geographical technology not only introduced China to the making of novel western maps to please the officers' curiosity, but also led to the reproduction of real social spaces and the mediation of government power to the local. Since peripheral eastern China area knew the imperial 13

from their estranged ties with the government, the increasing administrative control and the decrease of local agency may not be immediately noticed or even resisted by the locals for the control power was accompanied with property and communal protection in the chaotic late Qing era. In this case, the nature of different geographic notions and representations could be practiced by a different agency. Once there was a new technology introduced like modern cartography, the new place-naming method was not only a new technology but also provided a new perspective on the old territory. It could lead to new measures to the space where the power never reached before; that is why the politically defined area “Matsu Islands” could emerge from formerly unseen eastern sea. After that, the “places” on the map are ready for any political or martial instrument. From the local perspective, the scientific geographic knowledge responded to their native spacial notions. Moreover, it did not require plenty of personal sailing experience to be able to grasp the information provided by the scientific maps. The local knowledge thus gradually lost its importance because its advantage had been overpowered by the easy-to-follow modern geographic knowledge. The local spacial notion still exists, but it can only provide limited relative information now.

Fig. A Matsu Islands

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Fig. B Map of naval defenses across miles (wan li hai fang tu 萬里海防圖), 1552-1561. The red circles are the place names in contemporary Matsu Islands.

Fig. C Route that Compass Needled (Zhen lu tu, 針路圖) in Sending to Zhong-Shan (Zhong shan chuan xin lu, 中山傳信錄), 1719.

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Fig. D The map of “Matsu Islands” from the recent translated maps of dangers and importances on the river and sea of China (shin yi zhong guo jiang hai xian yao tu zhi 新譯中國江海險要圖誌)(1899), which tranlated from The China Sea Directory (1873).

Fig. E the Announce by the governor of Fujian and Zhejiang” ( min zhe zong du gao shi, 閩浙總督告示), 1869

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