Abstract
In 1892, Liu Dapeng of Chigiao Village, Taiyuan County in Shanxi province was reflecting on the difficulties of academic study. It was, he said, like seeing a series of maps: first one sees the map of the province and sighs that the land of our sub-county occupies less than one hundredth of the area. Then one sees a map of China and sighs again at the size of the land of which our province is only a part. Then one sees a map of the world and realizes that its vastness makes even China small. (Liu Dapeng, manuscript: 24th of the 5th month of Guangxu 18). The analogy illustrates not only the difficulties of study, but also Liu Dapeng’s ideas about the spaces within which he lived. A country scholar like Liu Dapeng looking at the newly available maps of China and the world was part of the process by which perceptions of space changed around this time.
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© 2002 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Harrison, H. (2002). Village Identity in Rural North China: a Sense of Place in the Diary of Liu Dapeng. In: Faure, D., Liu, T.T. (eds) Town and Country in China. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07001-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-07001-2_5
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