James Fallows

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More good news about Chinese maps

28 Apr 2009 04:15 pm

Over the eons I have grumbled about map-consciousness in China, but -- always constructive! -- I have also suggested one good online and one good printed resource. Now, thanks to reader Michael Mikita, here's another great online possibility, edushi.com. It's all Chinese language -- hey, this is China -- but it offers very useful satellite views, normal map views, and "3-D" views of many major cities.

Here is a 3-D view of my current cozy neighborhood in Beijing. The orange tags are bus stops; the blue shows an entrance to the Guomao subway station. The doses of greenery are highly imaginative; a ground-level view of the same intersection follows.
edushi2.jpg

How that intersection really looks, including one of the green zones:

And where we used to live in Shanghai, with actual areas of green:
edushi3.jpg

Artistic license aside, it's another useful tool, which covers a large number of Chinese cities (list, in Chinese, here).