Chinese Maps

Chinese Maps
Title Chinese Maps PDF eBook
Author Richard Joseph Smith
Publisher
Pages 122
Release 1996
Genre Art
ISBN

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For nearly two thousand years the Chinese Emporer, self-proclaimed ruler of `All under Heaven', demanded the obedience not only of his subjects within China but also of peoples throughout the known world. Maps played a crucial role in the administration of this vast system of states. Charts of foreign lands and images of the `barbarians' that populated them presented the world as the Chinese wanted it to be seen: with the Middle Kingdom as lord and other states as vassals paying tribute to it. In this richly illustrated history, Richard J. Smithshows how the Chinese depicted foreign lands and peoples in maps and encyclopedias through the centuries. He discusses the debates surrounding the production of maps, as well as their technical aspects and political, military and administrative uses. Reproductions of many of the most beautiful and noteworthy maps of the Chinese world accompany the text. More than simple refelections of the lands and peoples they depict, these maps and illustrations are documents that reveal the evolving values of the grand and powerful society that produced them

Mr. Selden's Map of China

Mr. Selden's Map of China
Title Mr. Selden's Map of China PDF eBook
Author Timothy Brook
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Pages 241
Release 2013-11-12
Genre History
ISBN 1620401444

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From the author of the award-winning Vermeer's Hat, a historical detective story decoding a long-forgotten link between seventeenth century Europe and China. Timothy Brook's award-winning Vermeer's Hat unfolded the early history of globalization, using Vermeer's paintings to show how objects like beaver hats and porcelain bowls began to circulate around the world. Now he plumbs the mystery of a single artifact that offers new insights into global connections centuries old. In 2009, an extraordinary map of China was discovered in Oxford's Bodleian Library-where it had first been deposited 350 years before, then stowed and forgotten for nearly a century. Neither historians of China nor cartography experts had ever seen anything like it. It was so odd that experts would have declared it a fake-yet records confirmed it had been delivered to Oxford in 1659. The “Selden Map,” as it is known, was a puzzle that needing solving. Brook, a historian of China, set out to explore the riddle. His investigation will lead readers around this elegant, enigmatic work of art, and from the heart of China, via the Southern Ocean, to the court of King James II. In the story of Selden's map, he reveals for us the surprising links between an English scholar and merchants half a world away, and offers novel insights into the power and meaning that a single map can hold. Brook delivers the same anecdote-rich narrative, intriguing characters, and unexpected historical connections that made Vermeer's Hat an instant classic.

Mapping China and Managing the World

Mapping China and Managing the World
Title Mapping China and Managing the World PDF eBook
Author Richard J. Smith
Publisher Routledge
Pages 289
Release 2013-05-20
Genre History
ISBN 1136209212

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From the founding of the Qin dynasty in 221 BCE to the present, the Chinese have been preoccupied with the notion of ordering their world. Efforts to create and maintain order are expressed not only in China’s bureaucratic institutions and methods of social and economic organization but also in Chinese philosophy, religious and secular ritual, and comprehensive systems of classifying all natural and supernatural phenomena. Mapping China and Managing the World focuses on Chinese constructions of order (zhi) and examines the most important ways in which elites in late imperial China sought to order their vast and variegated world. This book begins by exploring the role of ancient texts and maps as the two prominent symbolic devices that the Chinese used to construct cultural meaning, and looks at how changing conceptions of ‘the world’ shaped Chinese cartography, whilst both shifting and enduring cartographic practices affected how the Chinese regarded the wider world. Richard J. Smith goes on to examine the significance of ritual in overcoming disorder, and by focusing on the importance of divination shows how Chinese at all levels of society sought to manage the future, as well as the past and the present. Finally, the book concludes by emphasizing the enduring relevance of the Yijing (Classic of Changes) in Chinese intellectual and cultural life as well as its place in the history of Sino-foreign interactions. Bringing together a selection of essays by Richard J. Smith, one of the foremost scholars of Chinese intellectual and cultural history, this book will be welcomed by Chinese and East Asian historians, as well as those interested more broadly in the culture of China and East Asia.

China at the Center

China at the Center
Title China at the Center PDF eBook
Author M. Antoni J. Ucerler
Publisher Asian Art Museum
Pages 64
Release 2016-03-01
Genre History
ISBN 9780939117727

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China at the Center focuses on two masterpieces of seventeenth-century map-making that illustrate the exchange of information (and misinformation) between Europe and Asia. The world maps created by Jesuit priests Matteo Ricci (1602) and Ferdinand Verbiest (1674) for the Chinese courts tell fascinating stories about the meeting of two worldviews. They provided Europeans with greater knowledge of China and the Chinese with new ideas about geography, astronomy, and the natural sciences. The maps also show the ways that certain myths were perpetuated, especially as seen in the vivid and imaginative descriptions of the peoples and places of the world and in their depictions of exotic fauna.

Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds

Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds
Title Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds PDF eBook
Author Hyunhee Park
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 305
Release 2012-08-27
Genre History
ISBN 1107018684

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This book documents the relationship and wisdom of Asian cartographers in the Islamic and Chinese worlds before the Europeans arrived.

Symbols Appearing on Original Chinese Maps

Symbols Appearing on Original Chinese Maps
Title Symbols Appearing on Original Chinese Maps PDF eBook
Author United States. Army Map Service
Publisher
Pages 32
Release 1944
Genre Cartography
ISBN

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National Geographic Atlas of China

National Geographic Atlas of China
Title National Geographic Atlas of China PDF eBook
Author National Geographic Society (U.S.)
Publisher National Geographic Books
Pages 136
Release 2008
Genre Reference
ISBN 9781426201363

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Bursting with full-colour maps and graphics, this essential atlas provides in-depth geographical coverage as it highlights the dramatic cultural and economic changes now occurring in China. National Geographic's renowned cartographers ahve mapped the entire country - all its administrative regions and their cities, towns, and transportation networks - to create a complete and meticulously researched panorama of the world' sfasted growing economy and most populous nation. In addition to newly compiled political and physical maps, colourful thematic presentations post information on trade, energy, natural resources, environment, military strength, religion, ways of life, communications, and more. An exhaustive place-name index helps readers navigate to thousands of specific locations. State-of-the-art satellite imagery and mosaics - at the highest resolution ever published by National Geographic - reveal incredible variety and amazing details of China's sweepin physical landscapes. Ten major cities chosen from various regions throughout China receive close-up treatment, wiht maps laying out each metropolitan area and quick-read fact boxes listing local climate, time zone, population, and more. The profile of Beijing, the captial, pinpoints sites of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Also charted extensively is Shanghai, host of the 2010 World's Fair - China's first - expected to draw 70 million visitors. Since the nation's turn toward openness in the late 1970s, tourism has become a major growth industry in this land of bustling cities, spectacular vistas, ethnic diversity, and cultural and historical marvels. One of the 21 thematic topics focuses on tourism, with a map locating popular attractions such as the Great Wall, the Terra-cotta Warriors, Zhalong Nature Reserve, the Silk Road, the Imperial Palace, and Hong Kong's Star Ferry. A history section covers China's primary dynasties and then with a time line highlights the events of the twentieth century to the present. Charts, graphs, and photographs complete the visual coverage of China today, with expert commentaries adding insight on topics that range form teh workings of China's government to the lifestyles of its people to the global implications of its stunning emergence as a major player on the world scene.