Seems like it's very specifically chosen to preserve distances and reduce distortion along the longitude lines closest to China. Perhaps it is useful in that capacity but it introduces distortion for the entire rest of the world.
I guess it really puts the 中 in 中国 (中 means middle, 中国 means "middle country" and is the Chinese name of China)
It's fascinating to see a Mercator-style projection that does not produce a huge Greenland.
Maps like these must all have been frustrating to plot out before the advent of non-Euclidean geometry explained a bit better what was going on with the numbers, certain forks in the mathematical road taking you where things didn't quite make sense, and there was nothing you could do about it, except start over from a different point and or geometrical approach.
How is this a "Mercator-style projection"?
Also, people figured out the Earth was round long ago exactly because of these sorts of discrepancies. There just wasn't a lot of value in being hyper accurate since the purpose of a map before the invention of ocean ships was just walking from one city to another along roads.
This projection heavily distorts areas where it is not so obvious, as they are in the middle of the Atlantic and Pacific ocean, but also parts of Africa.
It's annoying when English names of countries are significantly different than what the countries call themselves. Besides China = Zhongguo, off the top of my head there's Japan = Nippon and Germany = Deutschland.
It's a thing in all languages, because not every language has all the sounds of every other language.
For example, in Chinese, Canada is Jianada, America is Meiguo, Brazil is Baxi, England is Yingguo.
My understanding is that Japan has a similar story as the European explorers who first made contact there were Portuguese and couldn't pronounce Nippon correctly.
https://feddit.org/comment/1079443
TY for highlighting the advantages of that projection.
Perhaps it is useful in that capacity but it introduces distortion for the entire rest of the world.
It's China. Of course it does.
Looks quite similar to a Cassini projection with the 75° E meridian as centre instead of the 0° meridian.
Seems like this map accurately displays the poles at the expense of the continents
Slicing the Americas in half is brutal, took me a minute to figure that out
When I was a kid, a lot of US maps where US-centered. They would chop Eurasia down the middle and include some overlap on the edges (so places like India might show up twice).
I'm still trying to figure out how you would assign directions on this map.
Like which way is "North"?
Interesting, not a projection that I have seen before.
I've never seen a sinocentric modern map before. Weird that they decided to go with portrait mode.
It's not really sino-centered though. It's indian ocean centered at best. As another user pointed out, it says it exists to see the world from a different perspective. It's not to be useful, only to show how things can look so much different with different perspectives.
'Cos it was the only way they could slice the americas the way many western maps slice asia
How else to fit both poles so close to the middle
I feel the blood rushing to my head
The box in the bottom right corner literally says "see the world from a different perspective".
从另一个角度看世界
(cóng lìng yīgè jiǎodù kàn shìjiè)The quality isn't quite good enough for me to see the rest but they are highlighting the different projection.
It is quite funny to see the US and the Americas generally kinda cast to the side in this map.
While it's obviously putting China and Asia in the middle (actually looks like India is right in the middle) ... as far as making certain areas look bigger or smaller than actually are, compared to the standard mercator style projections ... Russia and Greenland seem to be the "losers" here while Africa looks relatively huge.
Africa is huge- many people underestimate it, although in this case it is a bit too large compared to India in the middle. Also the colorscale makes Sahara and other low desert areas too green - the habitable part is not so great.
I can't read Chinese, but looks like the colors represent elevation, not how green an area is.
Africa is huge
Oh I know … I noted it as a positive of the map … probably makes Africa feel appropriately big compared to the rest of the world.
It is quite funny to see the US and the Americas generally kinda cast to the side in this map.
both are "generally" cast to the side. London is primal
Seems to make Antarctica look a lot smaller than it is too.
The way the map is layed out definitely makes it the hardest map I've ever tried to understand.
this is gorgeous thank you so much for sharing it. so interesting. terrible projection for many reasons of course but fascinating for so many more
I love the one that shows Japan at the top very heavenly looking, and then the British Isles at the very bottom looking like the savage end of the world
Having been to both places... Yeah I understand.
Cries in anjin
About right.
Panama can go soak, I guess...
Dem great lakes tho
I'm so stupid, I'm always thinking about traveling the global like east and west just go fucking north.
Good old "Zhonghua".
Xianghua is a top 3 Soul Calibur character fosho
Cursed
Don't know why I zoomed in expecting to be able to read it
I'm Chinese, I've never seen a map like this before. We usually just use Mercator but split along the Atlantic ocean instead of the Pacific. This map is just kinda bizzare. Why is Antarctica so prioritized? Why's it in portrait orientation? I think it's just intentionally weird, which is still cool.
5 insert currency says every china border on that map is wrong
This is not a political map
Wrong. It's just literally all China. /s
Unable to view a quality version
