Picture a map of the world. Americas on the left, Asia and Australia on the right, skinny Atlantic down the middle. Right?
Not in China.
They positioned their homeland almost in the middle – making the wide Pacific the most prominent feature, with Africa and the Americas shoved off to the side, distorted by edge curvature.
This double-poster size map hung on my apartment wall as a conversation tool. (The dark marks are tape residue that bled through in subsequent years.)
Such a map may look funny to us, but it matched China’s view of itself as center of the world. All nations indulge in a little solipsism, but for the Chinese it was embedded right in their nation’s name: Zhong Guo 中国, “Center Country.” Note the obvious symbolism of the character zhong: 中.
I dreaded looking up the Chinese name for America, Mei Guo 美国, expecting something degrading, like “Somewhere Over There Country.”
How pleasant, then, to discover that Mei meant Beautiful.
