Charting a Strange Garden: Mapping the Kuaiyuan Zhiyi

Abstract:No matter how bizarre or fantastic the events they describe, zhiguai (tales of the strange) are almost always set in mundane locations that can be located on a map, proving a wealth of geographic information for a body of narrative between the personal and the colective. Using GIS (Geographic Information Systems), this article explores the intersection of geography with conceptual categories of the strange in Qian Xiyan's early seventeenth century collection Kuaiyuan zhiyi, examining it on the levels of the collection as a whole, thematic categories, a particular region, and interregional connections. The city of Suzhou is Qian's central focus where all the different forms of the divine and the demonic cross paths.