Producing Knowledge of the Sea Coast: Marine Life and a Tang Geographical Miscellany of Lingnan

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on a collection of writing about the Lingnan region (present-day region of Guangdong and Guangxi) that grapples with a world beyond the shore in south China in the late medieval era. The Records of the Unusual from Lingnan (Ling biao lu yi 嶺表錄異) by Liu Xun 劉恂 (fl. 880s) details abundant marine life in the coastal Lingnan area (including Hainan Island), features several extensive accounts of seafaring and shipwreck, and is interspersed with entries on the crafts of boat-making, ethnography of coastal dwellers and other maritime peoples. This article places this collection in the context of a larger process of producing geographical knowledge, and investigates the sources and orientations for such evolving knowledge of the coastal world and its connection to the sea.