Secrets of the Selden Map - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 159

for there wasn't anything in that sea that anyone wanted to find or get to. Pilots of
cargo junks went around it rather than through it. They knew that, otherwise, they
wouldfindthemselvescaughtinadangerousgroundoftinyreefsandoutcroppings
lurking just above or below the water's surface. In the Ming dynasty, and indeed
all the way down at least to the nineteenth century, no one knowingly sailed into
this zone.
The Selden map does include some islands in the sea, but only those that im-
pinge on the routes running along the coasts. The Pratas Reef off Hong Kong is
there, labelled Nan'aoqi (which we might translate as something like 'South-of-
Macao Wash'). So too are the Paracels, the Western Shoals, depicted in two sec-
tions. The northern Paracels, the Amphitrite Group, have been drawn in the shape
of a sail, to which has been added the note 'Sandbars for ten thousand li in the
shape of a ship's sail'. Just south of this is an island painted red and labelled 'Is-
let red in colour'. To identify it with any particular island in the Paracels would
be to force an interpretation where no further evidence is available. Right below
the red island appears a comet's tail of hatchings trailing south. This appears to be
the Crescent Group, the southern section of the Paracels. It is labelled 'Reefs for
ten thousand li ': which is to say, a long navigational hazard to be avoided. As for
the hundreds of other reefs and atolls over on the east side of the South China Sea,
known collectively as the Spratly Islands, they are simply not there. No sea route
went through them. Accordingly, it would be tendentious to argue, as some eager
nationalists might, that the Selden map proves anyone's claim of sovereignty over
anyrockinthissea.Declaring sovereignty wasn'twhatsailors ormapmakers were
doing in this part of Asia in the seventeenth century. These were islands nobody
wanted.
This realisation leads us back to the purpose guiding the Selden cartographer's
hand as he drew the map. This is a commercial navigation chart devoid of imperial
designs or claims. Political nations, Ming China included, did not interest our car-
tographer. But then nor did the sea interest the Ming. The court was not persuaded
that it could benefit by allying with commercial interests, as Britain and Holland
were doing; the Ming preferred to see itself as presiding over a world order that
consisted solely of obedient petitioners to its court. The Cantonese poet Ou Dar-
en expresses this court-centred vision in his poem 'Coming through Plum Pass as
theEveningClears'.PlumPassisthenorthernentry-wayintoGuangdongprovince
through a range of mountains that separates the plains of central China from the