風景的形成和文明的建立：十九世紀宜蘭的個案

清朝在宜蘭設治十三年以後，政府官員開始在此地選定八景。八景以及對八景的旅遊欣賞，是一種分類和馴服周圍山水的文化活動。如果檢查這些景的地點所在，會發現它們往往位於文明的邊緣，和各種風水、政治以及軍事考量的集聚點。八景不只是美景，它們還是分類空間與維持界限的轉換點。
八景的建立，意味著一種階級和空間分類意識的誕生。一種超越當下和地方的文明社區，在八景及其詩文活動中逐漸成形；而那些衝突的、世俗的活動，也從圖像中消失。在八景中發生的詩會和記憶的儀式以及它們所留下的文字痕跡，更進一步地將末開化的山水轉化成可以欣賞與掌握的風景。
景的名字，是以四言詩的格式構成。這種山水詩的文學技巧與取景的成規所要製造地，是一種保守、熟悉的意象，將邊疆異國的山川轉化為一種可以和古典認知美感相容的空間經驗。而這種經驗，就是文明的效果。然而八景實際地點的選擇與詩意的八景名稱，兩者存在著內在的緊張關係；而八景詩所要製造的這種文人田園式的文明圖像，和方志上那些粗糙的版畫也有視覺上的衝突。我們發現在地方的作畫者眼裡，文明仍然是粗糙、危險，而且隨時具有衝突的可能性。這個斷裂不但挑戰了文明再現的真實性，並質疑了這種以文字來製造統一的表象。

Thirteen years after Yilan was incorporated into the Qing Empire, scholar-officials in the local administration began touring and enjoying the landscape of this district. They selected ’Eight Scenes of Yilan’ as the most celebrated sites to visit, and gathered local talents to conduct poetry meeting on these spots. However, if we investigate the location of these scenes more carefully, it becomes clear that these sites were more than beautiful sceneries. They were also the nodal points of local geography, the convergent points of political, military, commercial, and geomantic concerns.
The selection of the ’Eight Scenes’ denoted the creation of a new social and spatial consciousness separating refined cultural activities from mundane daily life. By learning the proper way to appreciate scenery and participating in the literary occasions held in these sites, local students and talents began to form a civilized community transcending local visions. The literary traces left from touring activities, including the poems of occasion and calligraphies on rock, tablet, or paper, can define and domesticate the landscape of frontiers, and incorporate local geography into the mapping of the civilized world.
The title of each f the ’Eight Scenes’ was formulated as a four-character couplet, the oldest form of Chinese poetry. They were designed to create a sense of familiarity and conservatism. At the same time, they projected a traditional cosmological order onto the newly acquired land. By selecting and naming the landscape scenery, magistrates connected the local and peripheral to the central and cultivated through literary convention and aesthetic experience.
However, upon closer investigation of the chasms between text and visuals, poetry and painting, we discover an inner tension behind the stable and unified vision of the civilized world among the various representations of ’Eight Scenes.’ The Chinese empire claimed to encompass all-under-heaven by inscribing literary, patterned traces on the surfaces of paper, cloth, wood, and stone, but the discrepancy and discordance among these media continued to expose the sutures of both local differences ignored in the civilizing project and contradictory requisitions in the complex process of governing.