Island studies, many say, is an emerging field. Similarly, it is important to pursue a decolonial island studies that rethinks the ways in which island development research can end up marginalising Indigenous voices at the same time as it seeks to understand islands 'on their own terms'. It is also necessary for island studies to grapple with a number of problematic tendencies within the field and the wider scholarship, including by challenging the misuse of island spatiality to produce idealised visions of islands (for example in island sustainability research).
It is important that island studies not only continue deepening its internal theoretical understandings but also reach out to other fields and regions that have received limited attention within island studies. Island studies has developed into an established, interdisciplinary research field. This paper also pursues a decolonial island studies by challenging some of the Eurocentric and imperialistic tendencies within the research field, which have led to a privileging of Western island metaphors and understandings. By exploring island traditions in Chinese literature, this paper adds to our knowledge of how and why people throughout history have regarded islands and archipelagos as special.
These conceptions of sacred islands and islands of adventure coexisted with the use of actual islands as places of political exile. As China's maritime activity increased, so, too, did fiction regarding islands of adventure.
Over time, Taoism came to associate islands with the home of the gods, and Chinese Buddhism came to associate islands with dragon kings. This inspired a trend for voyages in search of mythological sacred islands as well as a landscape architecture trend for constructing artificial islands in imperial palace gardens. From at least the 3rd Century BCE, mainland Chinese culture regarded islands as sacred, unapproachable fairylands, home to the elixir of immortality. This paper explores conceptions of islands in Ancient and Imperial China.
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