Yu-chuan Chen

By the twelfth century, boat travel along the Nine Bend Stream became essential for navigating the Wuyi Mountains in southeastern China, linking its spiritual sites, historical monuments, and natural landmarks. This project explores how these journeys structured the region’s ecological and cultural networks, connecting human and nonhuman life across cliff inscriptions, Daoist paintings, maps, and photographs. Drawing upon ecocritical art history, sacred geography, and phenomenology, this book argues for the multivalent role of Wuyi as more than an aesthetic subject; it is a memory repository, spiritual agent, travel destination, and economic hub.