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 ill-
equipped 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

1
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 th
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.

2
 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
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.
3
Source is as above.(李仕德, 2006: 63-91)
4
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.
5
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.

3
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, Fu yang san si yue dong nan feng xun,
and the barbarians' ships would come from Kwangtung into Fujian. Fan chuan zi yue qu min ru,
they are from the Sea of South, the Running Horse River. yu hai nan qi shi fa yu Zou-ma-shi.

And the wicked bandits will adjoin each other at the frontiers, Er jian tu jiao jie zhi shen,
(we) would better arrange sentry at Tong-shan and xuan-zhong, yi yu fu hai tong-shan xuan-zhong deng shao bing shou
and the bandits can not berth but remain out of land. 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。

4
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 small-
scale 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 Stems-
Branches 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,

7
Kee-long, zi Kee-long-tou yi-Mao zhen dan-Mao qu shi-Geng zhen qu Diao-
from the Mount Kee-long choose -7.5˚ then 0˚ sail 10-Gengs see Yu-Tai,
the Diaoyutai, zi diao-yu-tai dan-Mao zhen si-Geng qu Huang-Wei-Yu,
from Diaoyutai choose 0˚ sail 4-Gengs see the Island
Yellow-Tail,

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 ill-
equipped 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 red-
handed 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。

8
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》

11
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）

12
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

14
 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.

15
 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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