Some of the geomantic principles Yixing relied on are also visible on
Ming maps that envisioned China proper as consisting of the bodies
or“trunks”(gan) of three dragons of terrestrialqiin mountain form.
China’s dragon trunks are divided along a west-to-east axis by the Yellow
River in the north and the Yangzi in the south. The image of“China as
great triple-trunked dragon” (Zhongguo san da gan long) was also
described in detailed provincial terms in Qing geomantic works:
There are three dragons inside China, called the three trunks; they are thegen
[northeast],zhen[east], andsun[southeast]...The provinces of Shanxi, Zhili,
Shandong, and half of Henan are all to the left [i.e., north] of the Yellow River and
are thegen dragon’s [terrestrial] veins. Gansu, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Chang’an,
Huguang, Liangjiang, Luoyang, and Kaifeng are all thezhendragon’s veins.
Yunnan, Guizhou, Fujian, Guangdong, Guangxi, and Jiangxi are all thesun
dragon’s veins.^22
Here the dragon trunks are nexuses comprising structures both natural, as
terrain circulating vitalqi, and anthropogenic, as administrative divisions
and urban spaces. The Hanspace habitat thus existed through an
map 2:China as Great Triple-trunked Dragon