Pokrewne

Start
Berling Peter Dzieci Graala Dzieci graala
Doctor Who The Ancestor Cell Peter Anghelides
Concept and Form, Volume 2 Inte Peter Hallward
[1] Rupture dans le reel Emer Peter F. Hamilton
Dysfunkcja Rzeczywistosci Ekspa HAMILTON PETER F
Bremer, Jan Peter Der amerikanische Investor
Beagle, Peter S Das letzte Einhorn
Catholic Christianity A Comple Peter Kreeft
Burroughs, Edgar Rice Tarzan Tarzan bei den Affen
Caribbean Kill Don Pendleton

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.There was even a road map of Taiwan, which has to be included in any mainland atlas for political reasons, despite the fact that nobody using Sinomaps will be driving to Taipei.It’s even less likely that a Chinese motorist will find himself on the Spratly Islands, in the middle of the South China Sea, territory currently disputed by five different nations.The Spratlys have no civilian inhabitants but the Chinese swear by their claim, so the Automobile Driver’s Book of Maps included a page for the island chain.That was the only map without any roads.Studying the book made me want to go west.The charts of the east and south looked busy—countless cities, endless tangled roads.Since the beginning of “Reform and Opening,” the period of free-market economic changes initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, development has been most intense in the coastal regions.The whole country is moving in that direction: at the time of my journey, approximately ninety million people had already left the farms, mostly bound for the southeast, and the routines of rural life were steadily giving way to the rush of factory towns.But the north and the west were still home to vast stretches of agricultural land, and the maps of those regions had a sense of space that appealed to me.Roads were fewer, and so were towns.Sometimes half a page was filled by nothing but sprinkled dots, which represented desert.And the western maps covered more space—in northern Tibet, a single page represented about one-fifteenth of China’s landmass.In the book it looked the same size as Taiwan.None of the Sinomaps had a marked scale.Occasionally, tiny numbers identified the distance in kilometers between towns, but otherwise it was anybody’s guess.Most roads were also unlabeled.Expressways appeared as thick purple arteries, while national highways were red veins coursing between the bigger cities.Provincial roads were a thinner red, and county and local roads were smaller yet—tiny capillaries squiggling through remote areas.I liked the idea of following these little red roads, but not a single one had a name.The page for the Beijing region included seven expressways, ten highways, and over one hundred minor roads—but only the highways were numbered.I asked the Beijing driver about the capillaries.“They don’t name roads like that,” he said.“So how do you know where you are?”“Sometimes there are signs that give the name of the next town,” he said.“If there isn’t a sign, then you can stop and ask somebody how to get to wherever you want to go.”The driver’s exam touched on this too:352.If another motorist stops you to ask directions, you shoulda) not tell him.b) reply patiently and accurately.c) tell him the wrong way.Thousands of nameless roads webbed the Sinomaps, and it was impossible to find one clear route across the west.But another symbol was less confusing:.This marking appeared on the northeastern coast, at the city of Shanhaiguan, and from there it ran westward through Hebei Province.It continued into Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Inner Mongolia.In the deserts of Ningxia and Gansu, where dotted sands lay thick as stars, neat lines of pierced the galaxy.That was one part of a Sinomap that was easy to understand: even as a boy I would have recognized it as the Great Wall.Throughout my childhood, whenever I looked at a map of China I thought: Imagine following a wall across a whole country!At one point the Chinese had even considered converting the Great Wall into a highway.During the 1920s, intellectuals in China began to look to the example of the United States, where the automobile was already transforming the landscape.Chinese urban planners, some of whom had been educated in the States, encouraged cities to demolish their ancient defensive walls and use the material to build loop roads suitable for cars.By 1931 more than two dozen places had adopted this strategy, including the southern city of Guangzhou, which tore down structures that were over eight hundred years old.Inevitably, modernizers turned their attention to the Great Wall itself.In 1923, the Shanghai newspaper Shenbao published an article titled “Using Waste Material to Build a Road on the Great Wall.” The author, Lei Sheng, supported a recent government proposal to modernize the structure; in Lei’s opinion it represented “a very good opportunity.” He wrote: “The Great Wall runs from Shanhaiguan to Yumenguan; it’s continuous for thousands of li, and it’s a straight line.To convert it into a road would link Beijing, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu; it would make it easier to do business….” The proposal bounced around for a while—in 1931, the influential Students’ Magazine supported it.Their article explained that with all the stones in the wall, “not so much capital will be required, with the result being that we’ll fill a big gap in transportation infrastructure, going from the east to the west, from the ocean to the interior….”Nobody ever acted on this plan, undoubtedly because Great Wall regions are so rugged and remote [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]