RESEARCH EXPLAINED
Research by Ling-Wei Kung
The question behind the research
A map records choices as well as places. Suningga’s long scroll combines observation, military experience, and inherited ways of understanding geography. By reading pictures together with annotations and archival records, the article shows how local knowledge contributed to imperial cartography.
What to look for in the article
This article studies the surviving manuscript of the Wanli Huijiang tu, made in 1773 by the Mongol banner officer Suningga and preserved in the Fu Ssu-nien Library. Reading its images, annotations, preface, and postscript alongside Manchu and Chinese records, it investigates how military experience and diverse geographical traditions shaped Qing knowledge of Xinjiang. The study examines infrastructure and landscape in southern Xinjiang after the Qing conquest of the Zunghars. It provides colour reproductions, annotated transcriptions, and a GIS reconstruction of transport routes, demonstrating the value of manuscript maps for linking local knowledge with imperial geography.
Read the research
This introduction is based on the article below; consult the full text for its evidence and qualifications.
Kung, Ling-Wei. “Suningga’s Wanli Huijiang Tu and Qing Geographic Knowledge of Xinjiang in the Late Eighteenth Century.” Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica 94, no. 3 (2023): 573–651.