A World Map Under Eastern Eyes
What does china really think of the U.S.? Spend some time in the Middle Kingdom, and you'll hear both protestations of admiration and plenty of disparaging comments about the West. Such attitudes have a long history. In 1602 the imperial Chinese court learned that the inhabitants of North America were "kindly and hospitable to strangers." On the other hand, they "kill one another all the year round, and spend their time in fighting and robbery. They feed exclusively on snakes, ants, spiders and other creeping things."
Those lines are written on a map of the world on display at the Library of Congress in Washington through April. The map is so rare — only six copies are known to exist — that to a fan of cartography, its exhibition is a bit like giving a devout Christian a chance to hold the Holy Grail. Prepared for the court of Emperor Wanli of the Ming dynasty by Matteo Ricci, a Jesuit missionary in Beijing, the map places China at the center of the world, just where Chinese scholars thought (and think) appropriate. It was purchased last year by the James Ford Bell Trust from a Japanese collector and will move to permanent display at the University of Minnesota after its sojourn in Washington. (See 25 Asian experiences.)
Ricci, an Italian polymath, was perhaps the most talented of an extraordinary collection of Jesuits who went to China in the 16th and 17th centuries, taking Western learning with them. It was not a one-way exchange: Ming China was no slouch when it came to science and technology, and China's cartographic tradition was long and rich. Ricci's map is thought to be the first Chinese representation of the world as a sphere. But the map is at its most detailed in its depiction of China itself, an indication, as Professor Cordell Yee of St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., says, that Ricci was able to draw on Chinese gazetteers and atlases for his work.
Beyond China and its immediate environs, the map relies on the great European voyages of exploration of the previous 120 years. Unsurprisingly, those areas that had already been settled by Europeans are drawn in greatest detail: the coastline of Mexico, right up to Baja California, for example, is astonishingly accurate, while that of the Northeastern seaboard of North America is much less so. (See 25 more asian experiences.)
To those used to antique Western maps, Ricci's work — displayed here on six tall screens — is not especially beautiful. The map is densely covered not with gorgeous cartouches and drawings of unicorns, whales and horrible monsters of the land and sea but with text, including endorsements from Ricci's Chinese friends and passages naming territories ("Ka-na-ta," for example) and describing the habits of those who live there. That's how we can be sure that Ming China knew about hammocks. In parts of South America, Ricci wrote, "men sleep without beds or mattresses, but make nets of knotted cords. These they suspend from trees and recline in them." (The Library of Congress does not offer a translation of the text, but you can find a good one in the 1918 and '19 issues of the Geographical Journal.)
Seventeenth century Chinese, of course, would have grasped the aesthetics of the map quite differently from the way Occidentals do today. In China, "calligraphy is a visual art," says Yee. Combining European learning with Chinese artistic tradition, Ricci worked to make his map (and his mission) attractive to his Chinese hosts. Ricci, Yee says, "knew his stuff."
That he did. But the display of Ricci's great map is a chance to do more than just gawk at his achievement. There is a popular tendency in the West to see China's modern engagement with global society as something brand-new, the sundering of a hermetic seal by which China walled itself away from everyone else. This is quite false. China has been open to other cultures — and influenced them in its turn — for centuries. There's nothing preordained about how its modern rise will play out; much will depend on the skill with which China's interlocutors conduct themselves. That's one more reason to celebrate a legendary mapmaker and his work, even if he was rather rude about Americans' taste in lunch.
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