Toward an Archipelagic China: Alternative territorial imaginaries in two late 18th century Chinese novels

This article examines how two little-known mid-Qing (1644-1911) Chinese novels, Xiyi Meng and Haiyou Ji, construct alternative territorial imaginaries of Qing China through a constellation of aquatic elements, including submarine archipelagos, the whirlpool phenomena and river systems. Drawing upon recent scholarship on aquapelagos, it shows that the two texts display a fluid spatial continuum that reconceives Qing geography and redefines Chineseness through the centrality of waters. It situates both novels within a genealogy of Chinese island writing as well as the historical context of late imperial China, in order to shows how they reshape imperial discourses of islands into a critique of the Qing empire. It also utilises multiple mid-Qing maps to provide visual representation of the novels’ innovative assemblages of aquatic spaces as well as their imaginative underwater archipelagos marked by riverine geographies. In so doing, this study argues that both novels embody the processes of cultural assimilation and fragmentation that characterised Qing imperial expansionism. It challenges the homogenising paradigms of continentalism and nationalism that has informed contemporary concepts of China, contributing to the envisioning of decolonial futures.