Just saw a map online that had Taiwan colored differently from mainland China, and I remembered my history teacher in Beijing explaining why that's a common mistake.

3 comments

3 Comments

My cousin in Shanghai collects old school maps. He showed me one from the 70s where the borders were all hand painted, and even Hainan Island was a slightly different shade. Made me realize how much map making has changed.

dixon.amy2mo ago

Honestly, that's so cool. I read an article a while back about how those old maps were basically art projects, with teams of people painting and checking every single line. It must have taken forever. Makes our GPS stuff look pretty boring in comparison, even if it is way more exact. There's something special about a map you know someone actually touched and colored by hand.

finley_bennett281mo ago

Did they use actual paint for the shading, or was it some kind of ink wash? I saw a documentary once where they showed how cartographers would hand mix colors to get the exact green for forests or blue for water, and if they messed up the shade they had to start the whole sheet over. That detail about Hainan being a different shade is wild, it really shows how much human error and choice went into each map back then.