This project examines the making of imperial geomantic knowledge in late imperial China through the rise of the Luantou school of geographic physiognomy (luantoupai xiangdishu 巒頭派相地術). It explores how, after the Ming (1368–1644) court adopted this southern tradition for state purposes, local practitioners and wealthy landowners elevated regional expertise into imperial authority. Families of prominent geomancers framed the arduous journeys required to select imperial tomb sites in distant Beijing as acts of devotion, using these narratives to claim the title of “national master” (guoshi 國師) within their lineages. Some retroactively linked earlier fengshui specialists of the ninth and tenth centuries—itinerant ritualists rather than professional geomancers—to imperial service, presenting ancestral connections as evidence of enduring prestige.
The project highlights the contested nature of these claims. Rival practitioners engaged in open disputes, and local gazetteers became arenas for negotiating whose expertise merited recognition. Elite landholders likewise sought association with national masters to strengthen their own status, asserting that celebrated geomancers had chosen their earliest ancestral tombs.
Drawing on the Veritable Records of the Ming (Mingshilu 明實錄), collected works (wenji 文集), local gazetteers, genealogies, household encyclopedias (riyong leishu 日用類書), and fengshui manuscripts gathered through archival and field research, the study demonstrates that fengshui knowledge was not a fixed technical system but a dynamic practice continually reconfigured to meet social, political, and economic needs in late imperial China.