Graphics and text in the production of technical knowledge in China : the warp and the weft / edited by Francesca Bray, Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Georges Métailié.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: The powers of 'tu' / Francesca Bray -- La représentation visuelle dans les pratiques pyro-ostéo-mantiques dans la Chine archaïque / Olivier Venture -- Placed into the right position : etymological notes on 'tu' and congeners / Wolfgang Behr -- Time, space and orientation : figurative representations of the sexagenary cycle in ancient and medieval China / Marc Kalinowski -- Communication by design : two silk manuscripts of diagrams (tu) from Mawangdui Tomb Three / Donald Harper -- Picturing or diagramming the universe / Wu Hung -- Mapless mapping : did the maps of the Shan hai jing ever exist? / Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann -- The tables (biao) in Sima Qian's Shi ji : rhetoric and remembrance / Griet Vankeerberghen -- The Avatamsaka-sûtra as a 'bodhi mandala text' / Hermann-Josef Röllicke -- Diagrams as an architecture by means of words : the Yanji tu / Michael Lackner -- Imagining practice : sense and sensuality in early Chinese medical illustration / Vivienne Lo -- Geometrical diagrams in traditional Chinese mathematics / Alexei Volkov -- Woodcut illustration : a general outline / Michela Bussotti -- The representation of plants : engravings and paintings / Georges Métailié -- Agricultural illustrations : blueprint or icon? / Francesca Bray -- 'Like obtaining a great treasure' : the illustrations in Song Yingxing's The Exploitation of the Works of Nature / Peter J. Golas -- Song Yingxing's illustrations of iron production / Donald B. Wagner -- The body revealed : the contribution of forensic medicine to knowledge and representation of the skeleton in China / Catherine Despeux -- New maps for the modernizing state : western cartographic knowledge and its application in 19th and 20th century China / Iwo Amelung.

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Local access pdf: [Bray-Graphics and Text.pdf]

This collection offers a challenging new interpretation of technical knowledge in Chinese thought and practice. Conveying technical knowledge in China through charts, plans or drawings ( tu ) dates back to antiquity. Earlier studies focused on specialised forms of tu like maps or drawings of machines. Here, however, tu is identified in Chinese terms, viz. as a philosophical category of knowledge production: visual templates for action, spanning a range from mandala to modernist mapping projects, inseparable from writing but with distinctive powers of communication. A distinction is made between two principal types of tu : ritual/symbolic and representational, highlighting essential issues such as historical shifts in their significance, the relations between tu and political power, media for inscribing tu and the impact of printing, and encounters with the West.