The aim of this chapter is to examine how an Early Medieval Chinese geographer perceived, imagined, and represented space. For this purpose, I will consider the geography of the Middle Yangzi basin through the places of memory as presented in the Shuijing zhu 水經注 (Annotated Itineraries of Waterways). It was written by Li Daoyuan 酈道元 (d. 527), a Chinese literatus who lived under the Northern Wei (386-534), a dynasty founded by a Tabgatch tribe. 1 Li Daoyuan's work sketches an unprecedented synthesis between an empire-wide space and the human environment that shaped it, through manmade traces. Such traces can belong to the material realm (city walls, remnants of early civil engineering, monasteries, tombs), the immaterial world (literature, stories, myths), or blur the boundaries between the two (through inscribed writings for instance). As the author of a work that is both technical and literary, Li Daoyuan acted as a direct witness when he traveled to observe and record, and as an indirect witness when he used other narratives and documents.