A View Of The World in 17th Century China, Introduced by 坤舆图说

Due to a mysterous instance I borrowed a book from the Inter Library Loan. It was an introduction of the world geographics, written by a famous belgian Jesuit missionary in China in the 17th century, in ancient Chinese. The missionnare's name is Ferdinande Verbiest, or in Chinese, Nan Huai Re （南怀仁）. He served as a high official in the Emperor's Court, assisted Emperor Kangxi in astrology and many other scientific inventions. As the historical documents suggested, one of his possible invention might be automobile! Although most likely his automobile would be treated as a big toy for the Emperor, rather than setting it up for some serious developement of the world.

Now let's talk about this book of his. "Kun Yu Tu Shuo" (坤舆图说). Though it gave me a hard time in reading because it is written in ancient Chinese, and no punctuation at all, I'm still extremely amazed by the world he introduced in this book. Think about it, it was written 400 years ago! And it gets especially interesting when you compare the contemperary world to the world known to the 17th ceuntury. The book consists of two parts. Part I is the introduction to the geographcal phenomenon,including the Earth, its relation to the moon, center of the earth, earthquake, area of the confinents, ocean movement, famous rivers around the world, weathers, etc. Part II is the interesting one, a in-depth description of Each continents and many specific countries. All names were translated into Chinese by pronounciation. The continents are Asia, Europa, Levia, North/South Americas, and the last one that I couldn't translate it in to known english word. It should be something like Movaranica/Mageranica. Another note is by context Levia is now Africa.

Verbiest/Nan Huai Ren made us believe that Asia is best continent in the world. There's specific chapters on India, Persia (Bai er xi ya in chinese, took me a long time to figure this one out), Tartan (Asian part of Russia), Zealand (Sri Lanka), Sumantra, Java, Luzon (the Phillipines),and Japan. In his Europa there are Espania, Franca, Italia, Germania, Flandia (Flanders), Polonia (?) (Poland), Hungaria, Dania (Denmark?), something meant to be sweden (swechia?), Norwegia, Grechia, and Moscovia. In his decription Europa is a rich and eucated continent where everybody
believes in "the orthodoxical religion", i.e. Catholism. The Third biggest continent is Levia, or Africa in today's vocabulary. Contries mentioned are "Grido"? ->egypt, Moroco, Africa, Numidia, and many more names I couldn't relate with modern day world. The interesting found is Africa, which obviosly in 17century is a specific country/region in Levia. He mentioned Africa is west of "Grido", or Egypt. It would be the nowadays Libya or Tunisia, I guess? Americas is interesting, which he described as a land of wild animals and uncultivated residents. But South America is much more cultivated than North America. The countries names that I can understand are Peru, Chile, Mexico, "Flower Land", New France, California. Flower Land I'm sure it's Florida. After these countires there's this "fifth continent of the world", uder the name od Movaranica. From what I could understand, Columbus at first found the two Americas, then the king of Espania thought about if the earth is round, there must be a way to travel west to reach the east. While the land blocked exipedition at Ameirca, ther must be a west coast. Therefore he picked the ships, sailers and provided food, soliders, and asked a "powerful" official named "Movaran" to accomplish such a mission of finiding a pathway to the east. The "Movaran", intrepid, determinant ...blahblahblah...eventually found a channel, due south of which there is the land with thousand miles endless plains, vallelies. Because there's phopherous fire in the valley so it was named Fire Land. Now it start to make sense. Fire Land is Tierra del Fuego, south of the Straight of Magellan, belongs to Chile and Argentina. Now we see this mysterious Movaran is in fact Magellan, and he named this "continent" of his Magellanica.

Then the book went on to talk about the Sea, the Sea Animals, the Sea Ships. After that is the appendix with some drawings of Strange Animal, Seven Wonders of the World, and the Collosium of Rome. What's differnt from today is..uhm. in the Strange animal drawing there's Mermaids! mand mand woman! and their tail bone can stop bleeding, especially the female one.

Quite interesting huh. I can't understand the whole book. But it definitely is carefully worded, althoguht some of the content look stupid under the modern scrutiny eyes. It gives us a picture of the world in 17th century people's mind. This was the very text introduced to china back then. A great text on Ancient world communcation

Diversity paper due

Writer's blog again. This time it's up to a psychological level. idon't know when I would get rid of this phobia. Whenever you have a huge paper due and your brain is as blank as the paper (or screen) in front of you; and you are not allowed to say this, you are not allowed to say that, what can you say ey? This time is my paper on diversity due, fairly soon. I seemed to have tons to write about so my mind is not as blank. I don't know how to write about it in this MLA form, citations, using "academical language". hesus.