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The legend of Fusang (or Fou Sang) is quite complex. In the history of cartography, it is most notably associated with maps from second half of the 18th Century, when the legend of a Chinese voyage to the Northwest Coast of America thrived in certain scholarly circles.
Fusang, an atonal romanization of a Chinese term, appears in ancient literature as a mythical tree or location far to the east of China. In the Classic of Mountains and Seas, it is described as a tree of life associated with the sun’s rising and renewal. Early Chinese myths recount expeditions, notably by the court sorcerer Xu Fu under Emperor Shi Huang around 210 BC, seeking an elixir of life on an eastern island called Fusang. This mythical narrative laid the groundwork for later historical interpretations of Fusang as a distant land of marvels, potentially grounded in real-world geography.
The Buddhist missionary Huishen (慧深), arriving in China from Kabul in 450 AD, claimed to have traveled by ship to Fusang in 458 AD, some 20,000 Chinese li east of Dahan (likely Siberia's Buriat region). Recorded in the Book of Liang (7th century), his account described Fusang as a land rich in copper but devoid of iron, with well-organized communities producing paper and cloth from plant bark, and domesticating deer. While Huishen did not explicitly identify Fusang as the Americas, 18th-century French historian Joseph de Guignes posited this connection, arguing that Huishen's distances aligned with the west coast of North America. His claim, first published in Mémoires de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (1761), inspired a flurry of speculation about Fusang as a pre-Columbian reference to the Americas.
A number of European mapmakers incorporated Fusang (or Fou Sang) in their maps of America. French cartographer Philippe Buache, in his 1753 Carte des Nouvelles Decouvertes entre la partie Orientle. de l'Asie et l'Occidentle . . . , placed "Fou-sang des Chinois" north of California, near British Columbia. These depictions stemmed from Huishen’s claim that Fusang lay across the Pacific, leading some to equate it with the American northwest. Marco Polo's purported maps, including one featuring supposedly covering Kamchatka and Alaska, further fueled connections between Fusang and North America. The 19th-century writer Charles Godfrey Leland revived interest in these theories with his 1875 publications, asserting that Fusang corresponded to areas on or near the Pacific coast.
Despite its allure, the American hypothesis faced strong criticism. Sinologists such as Emil Bretschneider, Berthold Laufer, and Henri Cordier pointed to inconsistencies in Huishen’s descriptions, notably his mention of domesticated horses and deer, neither of which existed in pre-Columbian America. Joseph Needham, a 20th-century historian of Chinese science, concluded that by the First World War, the hypothesis was largely discredited. He instead suggested Fusang might correspond to locations such as Sakhalin Island, the Kamchatka Peninsula, or the Kuril Islands, areas geographically closer to China and aligned with Huishen’s distances.