Public Lecture and Roundtable Discussion “The Chinese Blue Maps: Heaven and Earth in the Early Nineteenth Century”

In the early nineteenth century, artisans and scholars from Suzhou created a pair of maps of the night sky and of the Qing empire, printed entirely in blue and titled Da Qing wannian yitong dili quantu 大清萬年一統地理全圖 and Huntian yitong xingxiang quantu 渾天一統星象全圖. These maps embed the Qing empire into the world beyond and connect it to the heavens. After having been printed in Suzhou using the pigment Prussian Blue invented in Europe a century earlier, they were sold not only in China, but also in Japan, where they were given new forms. In this talk, Professor Papelitzky will introduce the blue maps and what they tell us about how mapmakers from Suzhou envisioned their place in the world and the universe. 

Roundtable Facilitator:

Professor John Wong, The University of Hong Kong

Roundtable Participants:

Professor Elke Papelitzky, The University of Oslo

Professor Xing Hang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Professor Yu-chuan Chen, The University of Hong Kong

Dr. Marco Caboara, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Professor Paola Calanca, École française d'Extrême-Orient