broadly corresponds to what is known in Chinese geomancy as a
“dragon’s true lair”(long zhen xue), whereqinaturally concentrates.^4
The nature ofqiand its related systems of thought are equivocal
in their distinctions between material and metaphysical phenomena, a
condition I try to convey through use of the term“(meta)physical.”^5 Here
qi’s primary sense is the oscillating natural matter-energy conceived as
(meta)physically determining humans and their respective cultural and
historical experiences rooted in distinct geographical areas. Wang saw the
whole of China proper as aqi-saturated“dragon.”This process forms
“Hanspace,” an exclusive historical habitat for the Han.^6 For Wang
geographic location defines ethnicity, but the location itself is conditioned
byqiin an explicit hierarchy:
Barbarians [Yidi] were born in a land different from that of the Han [Huaxia];
this difference in lands is a difference inqi. Whenqiis different, customs are
different; when customs differ, everything known or done is also different. Thus,
there are intrinsic differences between noble and mean. Lands are distinct, bound-
aries set, and the atmosphere special such that they cannot be jumbled.^7
This is a view of mutually conditioning place and“race”not exactly
determined by environment, but byqi, a (meta)physical substance that
establishes an ethnospatial hierarchy that is environmentally compart-
mentalized. This substance usually comprises two complementary, but
also hierarchical, components,yinandyang. Their interaction is governed
by shen (the “unfathomable”) to produce universal (meta)physical
“change”that cannot be fully comprehended or expressed.^8
Hanspace, as a reductive and apprehensive expression, defined and
regulated Han ethnic identity, particularly among elites under authority
of Inner Asian conquest dynasties such as the Qing, which men such as
Wang resisted so bitterly in hidden word and open deed. It stronglyfixed
that identity to a particular place, China proper, as the natural ground
of their historical action. This ground was geographically, culturally,
and metaphysically, in sum“naturally,”separate from other places and
peoples. Chinese elite responses to incursion by Others into Hanspace
reveal both accommodation and oppositional trends, all of which refine,
and sometimes redefine, Hanspace under conditions of ethnically dis-
orienting encounters with other human diversity.
Strictly speaking, Hanspace, predating modern science, was not
precisely “environmental determinism.” It was, rather, a premodern
Han environmental construct of heterogeneous elements predicated on
a direct correspondence between humans and their (meta)physical
environments, which were mutually interpenetrating in an essentializing
24 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
