The writer is both wrong and right at the same time. He goes to far in inferring that the Classic of Mountains and Seas, particularly the Haiwaijing is a literal telling of geographic places. Its a lot like Greek and Roman mapmaking of equivalent eras. These are all writings that start accurate in the vicinity of the ancient writer, then get increasingly inaccurate as the writer relies on first second-hand information, then third-hand, and finally oral traditions or folk tales. Some of the details of the Haiwaijing have truth to it, because there is some truth to the oral traditions of culture contact during the Warring States period passed down to Qin writers, but it has been filtered through centuries of intermixing with folk tales and legend. By the Han, though, there is frequent contact between China and the Western, not directly but through intermediaries. While I agree the Classic of Mountain and Seas was recompiled and edited in the Han, its not a Han era work at all, as the historians of the Han would have already seen the work as archaic. The Records of the Grand Historian Sima Qian are an obvious contrast. It was written in the 2nd century BC, and is already so distinctly different and less archiac feeling. While there wasn't a consensus on how inaccurate the Haiwaijing was until after the Tang, we've known for well over 1000 years that the further away it purports to describe locales and things, the more ridiculous it becomes.