Mapping ancient Chinese Antarctica

• Main Author: Forêt, Philippe
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Oestasiatiska Museet 2001
• Subjects: cultural studies; Chinese Antarctica; cartography; carto-controversy; cultural landscape; metaphorical landscape; Base Great Wall (Chang Cheng zhan); Fildes Peninsula (King George Island; Chile); Antarctic Treaty; Chinese Antarctic Research Expedition (CHINARE); Chinese nationalism; Antarctic; Fildes; Fildes peninsula; King George Island; Antarc*; Antarctica; Iceberg*
• Online Access: http://www.alexandria.unisg.ch/215110/

Western mass media have granted a spiritual character to Antarctica and described the continent as offering much more to the travelers than an exotic landscape of floating icebergs and crazy penguins. Antarctica provides a popular topic for introspective travelogues, science fiction novels, and accounts of British gallantry. More and more wealthy retirees, stamp collectors and mountain climbers travel there, but the continent and its islands have primarily remained the province of physical scientists. An American geographer noted with pride in 1912 that Antarctica was "the stamping ground of explorers and scientists, and it would seem therefore as if scientific geographers had full sway and should crystallize Antarctic names in accordance with the claims of discovery." The cartographic representation and the Chinese nomenclature of this stamping ground are what I am about to analyze.