Garret Pagenstecher Olberding

Though there have been repeated assertions of the general metric accuracy of early Chinese maps, from definitions and explications in various texts it seems they were distilled more from a composite of individual sojourns than from careful survey reports. In this essay, I investigate the etymology of the Chinese term, tu 圖, commonly translated as “map,” and canvass early textual descriptions of geographic space, descriptions impacted or defined by strategic considerations. Such descriptions suggest that map sketches graphically simplified and reduced everyday behavior, rendering the journeys of those who reported on the areas in an abstract form. Early sketches joined, collated, and combined multiple travel reports, the resulting product effectively a ghostly assembly of collected footsteps, delivering to the map user the essentials of what, in a given land space, would hinder or assist movement. If what early Chinese maps primarily record are their informers’ traversing through and inhabiting of space, we must carefully rethink how the markings of lived experience pervade and distort the static representations of the sketch or map.

The primary stimulus to this essay is the widely referenced narrative in Sima Qian’s *Records of the Grand Historian* (*Shiji* 史記) about the assassination attempt against the king of Qin by Jing Ke, a tale repeatedly examined in later historical records.  In the later records, the Jing Ke narrative is most often cited as a cautionary tale, as a heroic albeit clumsily executed attempt to end a tyrant’s rule. Yet what is actually most striking about the tale is not any supposed courage or heroism but how inept and ill-conceived the whole escapade is.  Using parallels with Roman assassination narratives, I argue that a careful parsing of early assassination attempts reveals their frequent anti-heroic and clownish portrayal.  I conclude that the *Records* account is thus less a condemnation of tyranny than a sardonic critique on the self-aggrandizement of both the monarch and his aspiring deposers.  What it is not is a cautionary lesson about the wages of tyrannical rule.

Though there have been repeated assertions of the general metric accuracy of early Chinese maps, from definitions and explications in various texts it seems they were distilled more from a composite of individual sojourns than from careful survey reports. In this essay, I investigate the etymology of the Chinese term, tu 圖, com- monly translated as “map,” and canvass early textual descriptions of geographic space, descriptions impacted or defined by strategic considerations. Such descrip- tions suggest that map sketches graphically simplified and reduced everyday behav- ior, rendering the journeys of those who reported on the areas in an abstract form. Early sketches joined, collated, and combined multiple travel reports, the resulting product effectively a ghostly assembly of collected footsteps, delivering to the map user the essentials of what, in a given land space, would hinder or assist movement. If what early Chinese maps primarily record are their informers’ traversing through and inhabiting of space, we must carefully rethink how the markings of lived experi- ence pervade and distort the static representations of the sketch or map.

A major and as yet insurmountable obstacle in our comprehension of pre-modern Chinese military culture is the unfortunate dearth of detailed battle scenes or attack plans. The historiographical record simply does not include more than the barest out- lines of how battles transpired. This essay offers a possible back-door method for access- ing military movements and formations on an abstract level. It contends that the ancient game of weiqi, commonly known in the West by its Japanese name, Go, may afford insight into some of the military maneuvers likely employed in the Tang and Song dynasties, and perhaps even earlier. Using the earliest game maps available, found in the Song-era Wangyou qingle ji, with additional input from Ming and Qing texts, the essay spatially analyzes the tactical terms from a manuscript attributed to an author from the Five Dynasties and early Song periods, the Weiqi yili, and illustrates their potential employment using two historical passages, one from the Jiu Tangshu and another from the Hanshu.

What were the intentions of early China’s historians? Modern readers must contend with the tension between the narrators’ moralizing commentary and their description of events. Although these historians had notions of evidence, it is not clear to what extent they valued what contemporary scholars would deem “hard” facts. Offering an innovative approach to premodern historical documents, Garret P. S. Olberding argues that the speeches of court advisors reveal subtle strategies of information management in the early monarchic context. Olberding focuses on those addresses concerning military campaigns where evidence would be important in guiding immediate social and political policy. His analysis reveals the sophisticated conventions that governed the imperial advisor’s logic and suasion in critical state discussions, which were specifically intended to counter anticipated doubts. Dubious Facts illuminates both the decision-making processes that informed early Chinese military campaigns and the historical records that represent them.

In the popular consciousness, manipulative speech pervades politicized discourse, and the eloquence of politicians is seen as invariably rooted in cunning and prevarication. Rhetorical flourishes are thus judged corruptive of the substance of political discourse because they lead to distortion and confusion. Yet the papers in *Facing the Monarch* suggest that separating style from content is practically impossible. Focused on the era between the Spring and Autumn period and the later Han dynasty, this volume examines the dynamic between early Chinese ministers and monarchs at a time when ministers employed manifold innovative rhetorical tactics. The contributors analyze discrete excerpts from classical Chinese works and explore topics of censorship, irony, and dissidence highly relevant for a climate in which ruse and misinformation were the norm. What emerges are original and illuminating perspectives on how the early Chinese political circumstance shaped and phrased—and prohibited—modes of expression.

In any governmental administration, one of the most basic, and systemically crucial, functions of ministers is the arrangement and processing of collected information.  Such a task, however dreary and routine, has magnificent potential either to sustain, even improve, the proper functioning of government, or to undermine it.  Ministers who were honest and careful were, at least theoretically, prized, while those who misled were punished.  The concern was broadly recognized, for it is repeatedly emphasized in every tradition of early Chinese political theory.  But in spite of the relative paucity of documentation about ministerial corruption and their abuse of information in received materials, there is now evidence in various excavated texts that rulers and senior officials were quite aware of, and assiduously worked to control, the abuses of information.  In this paper, I outline the early Chinese acknowledgement and responses to ministerial corruption of documents and, if there is time, offer a plausible explanation for their general absence in the received historiographical texts.

Though much work has been done on the religious significance of early Chinese bronze mirrors, very little has been done on how exactly they were perceived to function. Is the conceptualization of the mirror’s function in Han and pre-Han China similar at all to the ancient Greek? And might our comprehension of the functioning of the mirror in early China assist with our understanding of how painterly representation was effected? I argue that the optical operation of mirrors may be indicated both by the analysis of how mirrors were represented as being used and by the employment of terms, both literally and metaphorically, related to light and darkness, terms such as shadow/image (ying 影/景), brightness (guang 光, ming 明), and shining (zhao 照).