四海之内——《大荒经》地域考    刘宗迪

《大荒经》描绘了一个四面环海的世界，前人基于“华夏一体观”和“中原中心观”看《大荒经》，因见其所记地理无法与华夏版图吻合，故多视之为无稽之谈。实际上，《大荒经》成书之时，华夏世界尚为分疆裂土的状态，不可能出现华夏一统的世界观和地理学，《大荒经》所描绘的只能是华夏域内某个局部地区的地理。上古时期，华夏域内确实存在着一个“四面环海”之地，这就是山东地区。《大荒经》所反映的即上古山东的地理，根据《大荒经》的记载，可以勾勒出山东半岛的海岸线，莱州湾、长山岛、琅琊台、海州湾，在其中皆有反映，整个《大荒经》世界不出山东范围。《山海经》这部保存了大量上古地理和历史讯息的古书一直蒙受误解，准确理解《山海经》，将使我们对于山东地区上古史乃至整个中国上古史的看法为之彻底改观。

Within the Four Seas: A Textual Research of the Territory Described in the Classic of the Great Wilderness    Liu Zongdi

The Classic of the Great Wilderness describes a seagirt world. People used to regard it as cock and bull story based on a holism of Huaxia or Central-plain-centered approach, because the geography recorded in it could not concide with the Huaxia territory. Actually, in the times when the classic was compiled, the Huaxia world still remained a divided state, which is impossible for a unified outlook and geography, so it could only describe a local geography within the Huaxia territory. In ancient times, there did exist a seagirt land, that is Shandong region, and the classic just reflected the geography of ancient Shandong. According to the record of the classic, we can draw the coastline of Shandong Peninsula, as well as the Laizhou Bay, the Changshan Island, Mount Langya, and the Haizhou Bay. As an ancient book which conserved abundant geographic and historical information, the Classic of Mountains and Seas has always been misunderstood. Accurate understanding of the book will help us change the idea of the ancient history of Shandong area and even the whole of China.