Therefore, we forlorn beings of the contemporary world have no choice but to set out on a search for this land of nonbeing. Yet we no longer hold out hope of finding it in forests or valleys, or on wasteland or desert islands, nor do we have faith in the ability of airplanes, ships, cars, or even our own legs to take us to this undiscovered spot. Only on a map can we find a land that has never been trodden and never will be. For a map reader with an adventurous spirit, reading a map amounts to the art of navigation. Amid thunder and lightning, surging waves and torrential downpours, and tempests that disturb magnetic fields and distort compasses, the map reader dreams of a brave new world a thousand leagues in the depths of the sea.
Such people are mocked by orthodox cartographers as utopian map readers, or utopian mad readers. As a self-professed scholar of cartography who has also joined the ranks of these map readers, I am always beset by contradictory and confused feelings. Can academic research also be subjective, or even consist of imaginative projections and speculations? Can there be a kind of personal scholarship, as Roland Barthes proposes in Camera Lucida: a utopian “impossible science of the unique being”?
I have been searching for the entrance to the land of nonbeing in old maps endowed with ancient charm and wisdom. If maps can harbor secrets, I’d imagined that they would have to be excavated from fragmented, moth-eaten documents rather than from so-called scientifically rendered modern charts. In the course of these cartographic ramblings, mistakenly regarded by others (and even myself) as academic research, I stopped at various names, just as boats seek moorings in harbors. In maps, names usually have more referential power than symbols. We cannot imagine how a map with no names could refer to an actually existing place; names are the only guarantee of referentiality. However, names frequently possess the greatest imaginative ambiguity. They conjure up a series of landscapes in front of your eyes more vivid than can be drawn by contour lines or use of colors for different kinds of vegetation. Eventually I came to understand that the entrance was not to be found in the hidden depths of forests nor in the boundless expanse of deserts, but in names.
Two names brought me to the land of nonbeing. The first is Chun Fa Lok (spring flowers falling), which appears on “A Coastal Map of Guangdong” in A Comprehensive Account of Guangdong Province, drawn by Guo Fei in the late sixteenth century. This map adopts a panoramic perspective from the land to the sea and from north to south and has a small island named Chun Fa Lok in the waters facing Kwai Chung (sunflower waterway) and Tsin Wan (shallow bay). As a name for an island, Chun Fa Lok could hardly be more entrancing. When its spring flowers wither and fall, they would form a vista as of a land covered with red azalea. What kind of a place could it be where flowers fall all year round? Would it be a memory of a magnificent spring, or a lament for the withered flowers that follow? Compared with the Peach Blossom Spring, it would be less bustling and more desolate, less hopeful and more elegiac. Chun Fa Lok is a fallen Peach Blossom Spring, a soft-lens version of paradise lost. But it isn’t without a faint trace of joy and promise, for when petals fall and berries ripen, summer will be a time of fruitfulness. A land of ever-falling spring flowers is a place that has never existed.
The second name is Fanchin Chow, which appears as the name of an island in “A Chart of Part of the Coast of China, and the Adjacent Islands from Pedro Blanco to the Mizen,” drawn by Alexander Dalrymple, Scottish geographer and first hydrographer to the British Admiralty, in the years 1760 to 1770. The topological features of several places on this marine chart remain uncertain, while the coastline of the mainland and islands is also incomplete, leaving many blank spaces open to speculation, and place-names are given only in romanized form, without Chinese characters. What could “Fanchin Chow” refer to? What was it originally called in Chinese? Is it possible that it does not have a Chinese name? Could it mean “boating in a shallow craft” (fan tsin chao)? Isn’t boating in a shallow craft an action associated with the Peach Blossom Spring? I seem to have ventured deep into the source of a mystical waterway aboard this shallow craft, arriving at the land of nonbeing, secluded from the human world.
The land is called nonbeing because it does not exist. All it is exists only as a name on the map.
According to later researchers, Chun Fa Lok is the place subsequently known as Tsing Yi (green garment) Island, while Fanchin Chow is Hong Kong Island. But these findings are beside the point for a map reader like me.
10
SUPERTOPIA
Borges tells us the story about a map that becomes one with the empire.
In his essay “On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1,”3 Umberto Eco proposes three hypotheses on how to make such a “total map” and then proceeds to disprove the viability of these methods. The three methods are as follows: first, to extend in midair a half-transparent sheet of a size equal to the empire, and then mark from above point by point on the sheet the corresponding topography below; second, to hang above the empire a nontransparent sheet of equal size, and then project the geographical details vertically upward from below; third, to cover the empire with a transparent, foldable, and adjustable sheet of air-and water-permeable material, so that all points on the map fully coincide with the land they represent. In actual practice, all three methods have in themselves insurmountable technical difficulties and irresolvable logical contradictions. (For details please see Eco’s essay.)
The major problem lies not in technical considerations but in the very concept of a one-to-one total map. Eco points out correctly the paradox involved: when a total map is placed, in whatever way, on the surface of the empire, the material existence of the map itself has already become an inseparable part of the topography of the empire. Therefore, if the map is to be a faithful copy of the total geographical configuration of the empire, it has to include itself in its representation, that is, to demonstrate its own state of being placed on the surface of the empire. In order to reflect accurately and faithfully the fact of the map’s being placed on the surface of the empire, it necessitates the erection of another map over against the former one. It follows logically that in order for the hypothesis of the one-to-one total map to stand, there needs to be an infinite overlaying of maps. The proposition is clearly untenable.
The futility of Eco’s brilliant mind game lies in his unnecessary hypothesis that a map can faithfully reproduce every single detail on the surface of the earth, including its inhabitants, that is to say, the actual condition of those who constitute the producers and users of the map. In fact, the nature of a map is not to imitate and its ultimate goal not to become equivalent to the earth. On the contrary, its inner drive is to master the earth, or to mold the earth, or even to substitute itself for the earth as the field of real human interactions. The earth itself has become the pretext for such interactions. The scientific methods and mathematical calculations in the production of maps (i.e., control of bearings, elevation, and scale; methods of projection for the highest accuracy in perspective, area, and distance) ultimately do not serve the purpose of reflecting reality but proclaim the rights of ownership, exploitation, and interpretation of the earth.
Therefore, all places on maps are supertopias, places that supersede other places and are positioned over the earth, and as such they are more orderly than the earth and subject to more convenient manipulation, modification, erasure, and embellishment. In other words, an ideal abode for human beings. (The ineffable bliss we experience is similar to the effect produced by examining the floor plans of real estate sales brochures.) The point of view of maps is always from above, never sideways (except old maps with perspective drawing of scenery) or from below (even when mortals come up with the idea of drawing a map of the underworld, it must still be viewed from above. It is hard to imagine what it would be like to draw a map of the living from below, from the perspective of the underworld). The posture that maps adopt is always one of looking down from on high.
Borges’s story speaks the truth: th
e map that becomes one with the empire is abandoned by later generations in the wilderness and slowly forgotten. Only fragments survive.
3 Umberto Eco, “On the Impossibility of Drawing a Map of the Empire on a Scale of 1 to 1,” in How to Travel with a Salmon and Other Essays, trans. William Weaver (Orlando: Harcourt Brace, 1995).
11
SUBTOPIA
Underground is no less mysterious than undersea, and we have had frequent imaginative accounts of this underground. The Italian novelist Italo Calvino has described in Invisible Cities the existence of an underground world that corresponds geometrically with the cities aboveground. In fact, however, the underground is not an untrodden realm; for example, the remains of an underground city built more than two thousand years ago by early Christians escaping from persecution can be found in the remarkable stony landscape of Cappadocia in Turkey. Yet to be underground means to be cut off from growth, shut up in murmurs of funereal songs under the heavy soil. It is a city of the banished, an abode for the dead. It can assert its existence only in the form of a grave, like the ancient tomb dating from the Eastern Han dynasty at Lei Cheng Uk Village in Kowloon.
It is not without reason that maps can be regarded as a kind of ancient tomb. The oldest surviving Chinese maps based on actual surveying are those excavated in 1973 at the Han dynasty Tomb No. 3 at Mawangdui in Wulipai in the eastern suburbs of Changsha in Hunan. There are three maps painted on silk in 168 B.C.E.: one topographical map, one showing garrisons, and one showing towns. If ancient tombs are places buried underground, then, as referential objects pointing toward immaterial ideas, maps are places buried under time. The act of reading an ancient map is inevitably a process of unearthing, for every ancient map is bound to be covered by another more recent one. At the moment of completion, or even before that, a map is in reality already in the past, because no map can be synchronous with time. A map is time frozen, but it is not the frozen time of any particular moment, for unlike photography, the making of maps cannot be a matter of an instant but has to pass through a period of time pervaded by external change. Therefore, the time immobilized in maps is fictional time that never existed. It follows then that the places depicted by maps are by necessity subtopias.
Take, for example, the Kowloon Peninsula. It is apparent from an eight inch to one mile planning map of Kowloon from 1863 that apart from the southern tip, where some development had already taken place, the rest of the area was covered with hills and fields. The map is monochromatic with the chief topographical features indicated with simple but clear contour lines, its minimalist style seeming to suggest a kind of rustic simplicity. In an 1887 map of Kowloon, the southern half of the peninsula is already covered in a patchwork of yellow, orange, and purple overlaid with minutely delineated streets, as cultivated and uncultivated land alike was slowly covered under strict orderliness. In addition to the gradual encroachment of urban development in the countryside, maps of Kowloon from 1902 to 1924 show layers of superimposition and accumulation over the city area itself, so that Robinson Road, in 1902 the main thoroughfare, had been replaced by Nathan Road by 1924. In an eight-inch map dating from 1947, the age-old simplicity of the Kowloon Peninsula is completely hidden under densely woven lines. It had become the sediment of time, the subtopia that can only be remembered and imagined, issuing faint, distant whispers from beneath layers of signs similar to geological strata.
12
TRANSTOPIA
The earth gives us a consoling feeling of permanence. Rivers change course or silt up, oceans swallow people up or set them adrift, and islands become detached. Only the earth remains impressively steady, seemingly unchanging throughout the ages. Apart from earthquakes, the earth is almost completely reliable, but it is also stagnating and dull. As scholars of cartography, we cannot cast off the ancient (and even banal) affection that people generally feel toward the earth, yet we are nevertheless intent on finding a way to introduce change to its steadfast immobility.
A map is one way of changing the earth. I suspect that it is also the most effective, thorough, and meaningful way. This change can take at least two different forms: transformation and transference. The former tackles the earth’s solidity, the latter its weight. Each involves a different feature of maps. The former is related to the technical aspects of drawing maps, while the latter relates to their material existence: whether a print, an engraving, or a stone rubbing, they are tangible, portable, foldable, and disposable, they can be circulated and they can be damaged.
The unique contribution of mapmaking is its ability to distort the earth’s solidity. The scale and degree of this distortion could probably be matched only by another global movement of the earth’s crust. Before the development of scientific mapmaking, the work of distorting the earth had been done in an impromptu and imaginative way. (Of course, there had been no lack of boring stuff, like the stereotyped representations of the world with Jerusalem as its center in the medieval orbis terrae maps configured under Christian ideology.) Following the advancement of scientific surveying in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, distortions entered into the phase of systematization as different methods of projection allowed great flexibility in regard to position, area, and distance. The landform on the map can be elongated, flattened, enlarged, or reduced in size. For example, in a world map drawn with Mercator’s right-angled cylindrical projection, the bearings of two points are the same as in the real world, but as areas become larger on the map the farther away from the equator they are, the distance between the points increases with the result that the size and shape of the northern and southern polar regions are highly distorted.
This technical transformation is no doubt only symbolic. After all, nobody can create a global disaster simply by scribbling on maps. But the opposite is also true. Symbols often take the place of reality and become people’s only means of perception. When people place their trust in maps without reserve, their cognitive receptivity will also become unconsciously flexible. Therefore, even though Antarctica may appear as small as Australia or bigger than Africa as a result of different methods of projection, people will still be satisfied with its indication as Antarctica and pay no heed to its transformations.
Apart from the question of transforming the earth by means of different techniques, I have also spent some time contemplating the question of its weight. The subject of my research is, how can a place be transferred? Or maybe a more fundamental question is, what does transference mean? The ultimate answer appears disappointingly ordinary, but its truth cannot be overlooked. Transference means to put something from one hand into another hand, that is, to hand over. In fact, it is extremely simple to transfer a place: you need only hand over a map of the place. The earth loses its weight, becoming unbearably light. On maps, places become transferable objects, concrete minimized versions of the vast, incomprehensible earth. When you hold this feather-light map in your hands, you are grasping the earth. In ancient times, Jing Ke made an attempt on the King of Qin’s life under the pretext of presenting him with a map: as the map unrolls, the dagger is disclosed. The symbolic meaning here is worth pondering. Yet when for whatever reason you acquire or lose a map through an act of transfer, you may not be sure of what is being handed over, whether it is the place itself or its sovereignty, knowledge, fantasy, or memory.
The history of mapmaking is full of instances where places are constantly shifting. Take, for example, Hong Kong. You can find traces of its transfer in maps of Hong Kong from 1842, 1861, and 1898. Using a linear symbol known as a boundary as indicator, these maps record continual acts of transference. Not only that, they also delineate the orbit of transfer and even calculate the precise route and date of retrocession. Like stargazers seeking a rare glimpse of Halley’s Comet, which appears only once every seventy-six years, people will turn their eyes to the sky on July 1, 1997, and the inhabitants of this land will slowly descend, huddled together on a map like travelers on a flying carpet.
The study of transfe
rence in Hong Kong maps inspires me to fresh thoughts on the concept of transtopia. I realize that besides meanings of transformation and transference, it also implies the idea of transit. Places that exist in the form of maps are inevitably fated to suffer transformation and transference, and as such they are like comets that travel unceasingly, circling over and over again, forever in the act of transit, never arriving at their destinations.
Transtopia is a place with transit itself as its destination.
13
MULTITOPIA
Theorists still disagree on the usage of the term “multitopia.” Some think that it should be used to indicate multiple spaces created in maps. Take, for example, the 1958 “Hong Kong Street Guide” by the publisher Jan Jan. Thirteen frames of different sizes and shapes are juxtaposed on this map, displaying the maze of streets in each district on Hong Kong Island. The peculiar thing about this juxtaposition is that the relative positions, distances, and areas of the districts have been completely rearranged, and in the resulting confusion Shek Tong Tsui and Kennedy Town, originally on the northern coast of the western district of Hong Kong Island, now appear at the foot of the southwestern side of Victoria Peak, while the coastal area from Causeway Bay to Happy Valley moves to the southeast of Central District.
The multitopia as represented on the Jan Jan map has the following features: first, districts appear side by side without any linkage between them. Cases of sudden transgressions of one space into another also occur frequently in multitopias. For example, while you are walking past Murray Barracks along Queen’s Road Central, you may inadvertently stumble into the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter; or, when you want to walk toward Shau Kei Wan in the northeast, you may accidentally cross into Aberdeen to the south. In short, this is a characteristic of collage. Second, districts overlap. For example, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon appear in Mid-Levels, while the northern coast of Hong Kong Island and part of Victoria Harbor are overlaid on the waters of Victoria Harbor to the north of Central. Third, the “same” districts appear side by side in different scales. For example, Central appears with the highest frequency, in scales of 1:4,500, 1:6,650, 1:17,500 and in an unspecified smaller scale, separately located in the upper, middle, lower, and bottom left parts of the map. In other words, this is a city that incorporates spatial configurations of different dimensions. You may be a dwarf at one end of the city but a giant at another. If you find the Central of 1:6,650 too crowded, you can choose to have a stroll in the Central of 1:4,500. The multitopia in the Jan Jan map is an open place, welcoming choice and inviting the unexpected.
Atlas Page 5
