ABSTRACT
It must be a widespread if not universal truth that in the naming of a settlement, defining it as a place, there is both a geo-story and a geo-graphy. I am going to outline a number of stories and graphies of a single place. I do not aim to be comprehensive, to represent all Chinese spatial formation. But because there has to be a cross-cultural comparative dimension, if only because I am writing in English, before attempting to translate these Chinese ways of making places and their stories I will sketch out one comparative European set of co-ordinates, contemporary with the Chinese stories I will retell.
