Tuesday, November 04, 2014

中南海

What does China look like, on a map? Once upon a not very long time ago, it looked like this - here laser-carved inside an old temple pillar by Ai WeiWei (at his big show at the Brooklyn Museum earlier this year). But I've been seeing a different shape here. When I search for something on Baidu maps (百度地图) it first shows the big view above before snapping to the more local query, a third spur claiming most of the South China Sea. I saw this aquatic lobe also on a commemorative globe at Fudan from 2009. (Another.)