论≪山海经≫的游历底色

Abstract

Approaching Shanhaijing through the conceptual lens of “you”(wandering /traversal) allows for a clearer understanding of both its textual substratum and its mode of world-making. Within the intellectual context of the pre-Qin and Han periods, you evolved from a ritualized action into a poetic image, a philosophical category, and a knowledge-producing mode of travel, thereby providing the semantic groundwork for an itinerant mode of writing. The itinerant logic of Shanhaijing is generated through a distinctive set of linguistic mechanisms. At the level of syntax, the pervasive use of “observational grammar” constructs a constantly present yet grammatically effaced observing subject, formatting sensory perception and functional judgment into a reproducible chain of knowledge production. At the level of textual organization, the spatial syntax— structured through repeated cycles of arrival, observation, and departure —transforms spatial measurement and route extension into narrative momentum. This itinerant logic reshapes ancient conceptions of spatial order and destabilizes the concentric hierarchy exemplified by the Tribute of Yu (Yugong). Through the progressive unfolding of travel, certain peripheral landscapes are assigned central significance, embodying a dynamic principle in which “the center is always on the move.” The meaning of Shanhaijing thus does not arise from a pre-given, static order but is continually generated through the unfolding of movement itself. In this sense, its itinerant substratum reveals an early mode of spatial imagination in which travel functions as a primary means of producing knowledge, while also offering the deep structural foundations that later enabled the text’s transformation into exploration- and quest-based narrative forms.