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A month before leaving Shanghai, I had gone to the customs office to arrange
the shipping of my topics and few possessions back to Canada prior to my depar-
ture by train through Vietnam. I had to unpack and present everything for the in-
spection of the customs official whose job it was to check what foreigners were
sending out of China. The official, a man at mid-career wearing the uniform of
the customs department, was pleasant enough; he was also thorough. After going
through my topics and papers closely, he set aside two things I could not send out
of the country. Both were maps. One was a national atlas, the other a wall map of
China. I had bought both at the Nanjing Road branch of New China Bookstore, the
official - virtually the only - book retailer in the country, and still had the receipts
toproveit.Theywerenotmarked 'forinternal circulation', thelabel printed inside
the vast majority of topics, which we, as foreigners, were forbidden from buying.
We had access only to 'open circulation' publications. It was one of those amusing
MöbiusstripsofCulturalRevolutionreasoning:thedignityofthenationwouldnot
permit Chinese to know everything foreigners knew, but it would not permit for-
eigners inside China to know the portion of what we knew that Chinese knew.
When I pestered the customs official in Shanghai to know why I couldn't keep
them, he blandly pointed out that of course I could keep them; I just couldn't
send them out of the country. When I pushed a little harder, he closed the subject
down by informing me that maps had a bearing on national security. In those days,
and probably these days as well, national security was the ultimate trump card of
Chinese officials seeking to restrict foreign students' access to Chinese society.
What that bearing actually was, no one could say. The only maps I was permit-
ted to keep were the approved tourist maps of those cities that were open to tour-
ists. These representations deliberately distorted space, on the flawed understand-
ing that, should an enemy air force seek to bomb the country, these maps would
confuse the pilots and cause them to miss their targets. (I know this sounds ridicu-
lous, but those were ridiculous times.) I took the atlas and map back to my dormit-
ory room, pondering what to do with them. The atlas was a hardback too cumber-
some to consider carrying in my backpack across the length of Asia, so I gave it to
a Chinese friend, who was happy to have it.
The map was another matter. I didn't want to get rid of it. It was light and
could be folded into a compact square. Why not just carry it out in my backpack?
Besides, the customs inspection had piqued my interest. I unfolded the map and
looked again. What would have bothered the customs official? What was wrong
with this map?
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