Ancient Chinese Geographic Records

Chinese geographic writing developed early and along distinctive lines, closely tied to the administrative needs of a centralized bureaucratic state and to a rich tradition of cosmological and mythic geography that long coexisted with increasingly empirical record-keeping. The Yu Gong ("Tribute of Yu"), a chapter of the Shang Shu (Book of Documents), one of the Five Classics traditionally associated with Confucius's editorial hand though almost certainly compiled centuries later, probably during the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), presents a systematic account of ancient China divided into nine provinces (jiuzhou), each described in terms of its soils, products, rivers, and tribute obligations to the legendary sage-king Yu, blending genuine geographic observation with idealized political cosmology in which the ordered, tribute-paying provinces radiate outward from a civilized center. This concentric, center-periphery model recurs throughout early Chinese geographic thought in the related concept of Hua-Yi (the civilized "Hua" center versus surrounding "Yi," or barbarian, peripheries) and in the Wufu ("Five Zones of Submission") scheme also found in the Yu Gong tradition, which imagines successive square zones of decreasing civilization and obligation radiating outward from the royal domain.