Writing the Yuan Palace Part II

Certainly Zhu Xie also included some photographs in his book, but it was the maps that were equally important, if not more so, than the textual verifications of the palace buildings, since he regarded the lack of maps thereof to be a common problem in early sources of palatial architecture. He based his maps on two primary textual sources: one major and one minor. The major source was Xiao Xun’s text, because as Zhu reasoned, “it was a record of field investigations,” providing an experiential framework for his work; the minor source was Chuo Geng Lu, a late Yuan dynasty compilation of essays on various aspects of the Yuan society, with a section on its palatial buildings, which would provide, according to Zhu, “a contemporaneous framework of reference.” Therefore Zhu’s method of working through Xiao’s text was very similar to that adopted by the authors of Clarifications of the Old Stories; in his own words, his maps “were based on primary materials, compromising various sources to create detailed [visual] verifications [of the Yuan palaces].”

Zhu Xie also acknowledged the occasional inaccuracy of Xiao’s account. Here he copied, word for word, the text from the earlier Clarifications on Xiao’s mistakes, although without acknowledgement. He went further; when he copied also the reasons for Xiao’s inaccuracy, he did not entertain the speculative nature of the earlier editors. For Zhu Xie, it was simply a matter of fact that “When Xiao was dismantling the Yuan palaces, what he saw was only from a quick glance at thousands of doors and gates inside the compound. It is only natural that he would have been mistaken at times.”

Other than the textual sources on which Zhu Xie based the creation of his maps, he also relied on earlier visual materials. One of these was a map from 1908 called Detailed Map of Beijing. He superimposed his map of the Yuan palaces on that map depicting Beijing of a much later time. Another base for his visual work was one of Zhu Qiqian’s maps, although not without corrections to it. Although Zhu Xie criticized Zhu Qiqian for constructing his maps from descriptions of Chuo Geng Lu, whose account of the palaces “provided only individual dimensions, and not spatial distances,” and thus coming up with maps that were largely results of “estimation,” Zhu Xie’s maps themselves were plagued and compromised in the same way. One of the most palpable examples is his map of the palaces western of the lakes, namely, the Xingsheng, Longfu Palaces and the Western Imperial Resort. He encountered the same problem here: “[These] three places have only individual dimensions, without spatial distances [between buildings]. And since there are 172 bays of the wu around the Yanchun Pavilion as there are around the Longfu Palace, I am taking it tentatively as that these two palaces are of equal size, and the rest of the palaces are estimated and mapped accordingly.”

As Zhu unequivocally claimed, the importance of visual materials, particularly in the form of maps, was not to be underestimated in furthering a spatial understanding of the palace compound. Scientifically produced maps, according to him, offered a much clearer vision of the objects being mapped. But as we have seen, probably contrary to his high expectation of his own maps, they contained as much ambiguity as the earlier effort to construct a clear(er) image of the spaces inside the palace in textual forms. One of such ambiguities that he did not bother to elaborate on was about the location of the Yuan palace compound in relation to the later palaces of the Ming and Qing dynasties. Zhu’s map of the Yuan’s Grand Capital Palaces showed that they were located slightly westward of the later palaces; in other words, the later palace ground was seen as shifted slightly to the east, which was why the two central north-south axes did not overlap. Yet in the same book, Zhu had another map depicting the Grand Capital of Yuan, which showed the major entrances of the city from the Yuan and later periods aligned on the same central axis without further explanations.

Although themselves the results of the author’s conscious working through a mist of confusing and error-laden texts and visual materials, Zhu’s maps would be found in many later publications on the Yuan palaces, together with the primary text that he based them on: Xiao Xun’s text. Prominent scholars from various fields continue to cite and repeat Xiao’s text, including even the pioneer of Chinese architecture Liang Sicheng. In his History of Chinese Architecture, Liang cited Xiao’s account in his description of Yuan dynasty architecture, without any notice to the disputed nature over the (in)accuracy of the source.

Another example can be found in Shan Shiyuan’s writing. Shan compared Xiao’s account with that of Marco Polo, and concluded that Marco Polo’s account of the “Grand Capital” was at best “generally true” because it was written “out of memory and unavoidably with ambiguities,” whereas Xiao’s text was “the most complete and comprehensive account of the Yuan palace” because (of the assumption that) Xiao was personally on the palace ground. But as we have seen, the circumstances under which Xiao wrote his account seem full of uncertainties and questions, and the circulation of his text is equally replete with contingent cross-references and selections of later readings and interpretations.The “authenticity” and authority of his account, nevertheless, has been established through the simple act of repeating, referencing and rewriting.

Indeed, later citing of Xiao’s text only reinforces his authority. A primacy of the (assumed) empirical (such as seen in Zhu Xie’s argument), and of the “indigenous” over the “foreign outsider” (such as shown by Shan’s refusal to take Marco Polo’s account as equally valid as that of Xiao), serve to transform an “observational narrative” into an “archival description” – in the final form of maps – which assumes historic validity and scientific and archival value as time passes. The recurrent and repetitive quotations of Xiao’s work, even when being critical of it, act to permeate the image (whether “correct” or not) of the Yuan palace in subsequent readers’ minds.