Beyond the eastern coast lie mysterious lands, their customs and products seeming to emerge from a dream. Such is the wondrous world brought to life in the Yuan dynasty work Gazetteer of Foreign Lands. More than a book of geography, it is an early historical record of interactions between China and other cultures, viewed from a cross-cultural perspective.
Originally titled Record of Snails and Insects, Gazetteer of Foreign Lands was written by Zhou Zhizhong, an academician of the Yuan dynasty, and completed during the Hongwu era of the Ming dynasty. In two volumes, it contains entries on about 157 countries and regions, including descriptions of the customs, geography, and products of 81 lands, such as Fusang, Korea, Japan, the Uyghurs, Sanfoqi, Dashi, Daqin, Persia, and the Land of Women.
The author made several journeys abroad. Most of his accounts came from what he witnessed and heard firsthand, supplemented with material from works such as The Classic of Mountains and Seas and Answers from the Southern Regions Beyond the Passes. Though concise, the book covers a wide range of places, from East Asia to West Asia and South Asia, and even parts of Africa.
Written in clear, brisk prose, Gazetteer of Foreign Lands records the Yuan dynasty’s early understanding of the wider world. Despite some oversimplifications and inaccuracies, such as imprecise geographical locations, it remains an important source for the study of exchanges between China and other countries and the encounters between diverse cultures. Reading it, you can almost travel across a vast world alongside a Yuan dynasty envoy, as his ancient brush sketches a grand panorama of transoceanic contact.
