Reading Chinese in Oxford - Map of China: Decoding the Secrets of a Vanished Cartographer - page 52

ficial dialect - what today we call Mandarin, that word being a Portuguese de-
rivation from the Sanskrit word mandarim ('official') - and his native dialect as
someone who grew up in Nanjing. One difference between them is the -ng end-
ing in Mandarin, which becomes -m in Nanjing dialect; another is the use of v in
Nanjing dialect for w in Mandarin. Thus the word for 'king' ( wang ) is sometimes
vam in the notes but wang on the map, although one half-corrected wan makes an
appearance.Michaelismorecasualaboutthesedistinctionsinthenotes,butonthe
map he does his best to stay within Mandarin pronunciation.
Occasionally the two men go beyond romanising and translating. For example,
there are two labels to the right-hand edge of the map that Michael romanises as
hua gin chi and hung mao chi (we would romanise these today as hua ren ju and
hong mao ju ). That is all either man writes on this part of the map, but the margin
has more. Most of the original margin around the map has flaked away to noth-
ing, but a fragment of the margin beside these labels has survived, and there we
can see fragments of notes that Michael and Hyde made. Michael has repeated the
three syllables hung mao chi , to which Hyde has added translations, although the
onlywordstilllegibleis'capillus',meaning'hair',for mao .Hydehaswritten hun-
g=mao againbelowthis,connectingthetwosyllables,asMichaelneverdoes,with
his characteristic double hyphen (=), and he has added a translation: 'Hollanders'.
The term hung=mao means 'red hair', and was the name Chinese gave the Dutch
becauseoftheshocking(toChineseeyes)colouroftheirhairandbeards.Thelabel
hung mao chi means 'Where Red Hairs live' and refers to a Dutch outpost in the
Spice Islands. Interesting for their own sake, these marginal scribbles hint that per-
haps the entire map was surrounded by such annotations. Analysis shows that the
paper used for the border was a European one manufactured from hemp and was
therefore added later, presumably in England. It may not have been intended to
provide Hyde with a sidebar on which he could make notes, but this appears to
have been how he used it. Too bad the border strips have turned to dust. It would
be interesting to see what else caught his attention.
The annotations could suggest that Hyde pored over the map out of a keen in-
terest in geographical knowledge. This first impression seemed to find confirma-
tion when I found a map in Hyde's file in the British Library that Michael drew
freehand. It is a map showing the Great Wall extending from the Gate of Eastward
Domination at the coast, which is not on the Selden map, to Jade Gate Pass in the
west, which is, and beyond that to points as far west as Turfan and Samarkand. To
the north Michael has filled in some two dozen rivers and mountains across a ter-