Shanxi Pingluxian Yutu [Map of Pinglu County, Shanxi]

Shanxi Pingluxian Yutu [Map of Pinglu County, Shanxi]. China, [Qing dynasty, 1644-1912].
A rare manuscript map of a county in Shanxi Province. It depicts Pinglu County snaking horizontally along the northern bank of the Yellow River with the formidable Zhongtiao Mountain range to the north. Seven branches of the Yellow River are rendered running through the villages and towns, connecting to the mountain range. No land roads are represented in the map. The map is drawn in traditional Chinese landscape style, employing texture strokes to depict the mountain and rock formations. It has two systems of annotation: one with names of places, descriptions of important passes along the Yellow River, and the four orientations, with north oriented to top; the other with red text labels affixed below names of places, specifying their distance mileage to Pinglu County. Some of the red labels cover the annotations written along the Yellow River, but this does not suggest that the labels were attached at a later time by another hand, as the ink quality and calligraphic styles of the two annotation systems are consistent. The map does not have titles, signatures or dates. Two comparable maps are in the collection of the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress: the atlas Maps of the River Systems in Henan Prefecture dated to 1734-1779, and the Map of Baode (Shanxi Province), dated to 1724-1764. Both locate Pinglu County at the southeast end of Shanxi Province. Nowadays, the county is populated by over 200,000 people, and the Zhongtiao Mountain has been developed into a national forest park featuring rich species of rare plants and animals. References: Kuo-Hsin Hsieh & Ralph E. Ehrenberg, Reading Imperial Cartography: Ming-Qing Historical Maps in the Library of Congress (2013), pp. 248-259, 338.
Manuscript map of the section of Yellow River running through the Pinglu County, in southern Shanxi Province, ink and colors on paper, backed by dark beige paper, approximately 480 x 990 mm overall image. Small towns and villages are represented by single houses, and large places such as counties are rendered as a flat square construction with walls as the sides and one gate in the middle of each wall. Very good condition with vivid and crisp colors (paper lightly toned, some wears along the folds, old restoration of two boats on the left side. Float-mounted and framed (unexamined outside of frame).
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