The Worst Environment in Which to Live in China: A Question of Points of View. The Legendary Miasmatic Far South of China Challenged by Local Doctors in Late Imperial China

Abstract

The South of China, Lingnan in particular (Lingnan = south of the Ling Mountains, including the present provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong), has often been described as the most frightening place in China to live with particular diseases, notably zhang or gu, usually rendered as “miasmas” and “poisons.” This chapter focuses on the “geographical imagination” of disease and health in China and examines how, when, and why the image of a particular unhealthy place was constructed and/or challenged in history. This chapter starts with a survey of the main ideas that were promoted in ancient medical treatises as regards the relationships between particular environments, expressed in terms of geographical divisions, and health issues and how these ideas were later reshaped or challenged. It then examines the historical construction of the Far South as being the unhealthiest place to live in China and sheds light on the peculiarities which were usually attached to the Far South. In the eyes of many actors who wrote about Lingnan, the dangers of the place lay in both its natural and cultural features: the ground was low-lying and humid, and there was an abundant Yang Qi pouring on the ground, which mixed with the Yin Qi of the earth caused suffocating vapors, giving rise to a luxurious vegetation, dense forests, and snakes. And in this particular suffocating Qi, there were aboriginal Man or Yi, who were known to make poisons that could threaten the lives of the Han Chinese. Finally, drawing on medical treatises that were produced in the Far South, and are extant today, it shows how this image of the unhealthiest place to live was challenged by local doctors in late imperial China.