The National Digest

Chinese Vertical World Map Focuses on Arctic

North America and Europe peripheral on China’s ‘vertical world map’

A Chinese ‘vertical world map’, showing the world in a different perspective from the one we’re used to.

Europe is tucked away in a corner, an appendage of Asia dwarfed by neighbouring Africa. North America is stood on its head, facing the rest of the world from the top of the map –cut off from South America, which cuts a solitary figure at the bottom. Africa is justifiably huge, but equally eccentric.

The eye scouts elsewhere for a place to land: not the Indian Ocean, which dominates the middle of the map, but some terra firma. Antarctica and Australia are too small, mere stepping stones for the land mass of Asia. Ultimately our gaze is drawn towards China, the lynchpin of this unfamiliar world.

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