Talk:Shanhai Yudi Quantu

Great South Land
Doesn't seem to show the Great South Land! Tabletop (talk) 00:15, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Look again. It's at the bottom. — LlywelynII  15:49, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Influence
The section marked influence is not clear, or clearly explained. The Ming map had been "tempered" by Jesuits but far from influenced. Please make proper correction.

The geographic features on this map serve as Temporal Markers for the achievements of the Ming Navy in the early 15th century. When Matteo Ricci arrived in Beijing in 1601, he had his subordinates find an example of the traditional Ming world geography. They produced a copy of the Shanhai Yudi Quantu Map that was probably made between 1425 and 1435. The Jesuit motive in finding this map was to identify a bona-fide document that could be compared to a more recent European map by Ortelius. It was at this time that the Jesuits added such modern titles as “North and South America” to the traditional map. The Jesuit plan was to place the two types of maps side-by-side in order for the Chinese to make a comparison of the maps. According to Jesuit historian Victor DeMattei, it would be obvious to the Chinese that the European map was superior in its accuracy to the traditional Ming map. In this manner, the Jesuits hoped to gain converts to the European religion. Portions of the original Ming Shanhai Yudi Quantu showed up on Portuguese maps in 1436 and later on the Waldseemüller Inset Map of 1507. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.60.221.60 (talk) 17:44, 14 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Cool but —  LlywelynII  15:49, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Chinese characters
The article is pretty well done, but America (mod. 美洲) is pretty obviously not "Yamolijia". The second character is not 墨 (黑 ＋ 土, "ink") but some odd character that looks like 廛 without the 广　(i.e. 里　＋　八　＋　土). Now, I don't know what that variant character is, but it was probably some mei or ma sound. Anyone have an idea? or is this just how they (mis)wrote 墨　at the time? — LlywelynII  15:49, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Then again, the 'peaks' in 白峰 is weird, too: the 山 is on top of the character instead of beside it... — LlywelynII  15:54, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Looking at other old Chinese maps, 墨 appears to be standard – I suppose this is just a variant version. — LlywelynII  06:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Article Improvement
Cleaned it up some, although all of these names could probably use a table or three (continents, places, seas). The source for the Middle Chinese names is "Baxter-Sagart Old Chinese reconstruction, version of 20 February 2011" – sometimes it's obviously right (亞 should be "a" and not "ya" in all these names) and other times it seems somewhat off (As "Guinea", 入匿 isn't "Runi" but it also wasn't "Nyip-nrik" either – probably something in-between like "Nyi-ni"), but then Ming Chinese was part of the transition into the modern sounds & also local dialects could shift these around quite a bit ("Ngyi-ni"?).

In any case, there are still some of the seas missing and the "Starry Sea" for Qinghai makes me think the source for this article was using a different edition of this map than the one we have up. We should upload whichever one Ptak used as well. — LlywelynII  06:02, 13 October 2012 (UTC)