Atlas

by Kai-cheung Dung

  Some hold a different view, namely that multitopia is the exact opposite of multiplicity and means mass replication. This happens when the scientific production of maps has developed into printing on a large scale. Before then, every map was a unique, handcrafted product. Many ancient maps found by archaeologists have this character: they are original texts of unquestionable status, elevated above mere instrumentality, and are therefore self-referential and self-sufficient works of art. But the ancient worship of original texts is already out of tune with the times, and the mysterious skills of original mapmaking have been lost. Amid the innumerable simulacra in front of our eyes, no map reading can ever take us back to our old hometown. We are lost in an orderly world, for we cannot go anywhere but along designated pathways. The way I take is no different from yours. Unwilling though we may be, deliberately choosing divergent paths, we are bound to end up at the same spot, on a topography that can be envisaged and comprehended in full.

  In an age of scientific surveying and mass production of maps, nobody can escape from the hall of endless mirrors that is multitopia. All we can do is to repeat the same gestures as our own reflections.

  14

  UNITOPIA

  Like multitopia, unitopia is a controversial concept. Unitopia can be understood in opposite ways: first, as an independent place, from the word “unique”; second, as a unified place, from the idea of “unity.” The former signifies an individual’s self-definition, the latter, the whole swallowing up the individual; the former tends toward division and autonomy, the latter toward convergence and control.

  Some people understand the dual meanings of unitopia through concepts of scale and borders. First, the existence of a place on a map is entirely reliant on the boundaries created by borders. A border is the cognitive frame for the division between inside and outside. It is said that the ancient Chinese character for the word “map” is composed of a square frame around the figure of a moving man, meaning “someone in the act of observing or surveying a plot of land.” Taking away the border and adding the character for “district” to the right of the man transforms this character into its opposite, a compound character with the meaning “rustic” or “outlying district.” This demonstrates the decisive realistic function and symbolic meaning of the map border in terms of cultural-geographical perception. The border endows the place it encloses with independence in regard to the outside and unity in regard to the inside. It rejects “whatever is not this place” and embraces “everything that belongs to the place.” Therefore, the map border is a manifestation of the dual meaning of unitopia.

  The problem is that maps under normal conditions have limited flexibility in terms of size: borders cannot be expanded or contracted indefinitely, so the exclusiveness and inclusiveness of frames have to be regulated by scale. Supposing that the borders and area of a map remain fixed, different scales can enable the frame to perform different defining functions. Since we know that independence and unity, or division and convergence, are for unitopia two sides of the same coin, the rejection or inclusion caused by adjusting the scale can only be a matter of tendency. For example, a 1:10,000 map of Hong Kong demonstrates, on the one hand, the inner unity of the city (including Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories and Outlying Islands), while on the other hand demarcating the independence of Hong Kong as a place that is not “the same as any other place” (for the moment leaving aside in which aspect this is the case). However, when we readjust the scale to 1:15,000,000, Hong Kong becomes a barely discernible dot on a map of the whole of China. Here, the change in scale deprives Hong Kong of its independence and enforces China’s unity.

  Therefore, all maps are unitopias. Two opposing forces operate within their borders: coming from one direction is an impulse toward small scale, which is also a desire to control the whole world; from the other direction is the ultimate quest for large scale, that is, the impossible task of making a 1:1 map. The latter does not seek comprehensiveness but specificity. Take, for example, a map of Hong Kong and magnify the district called Mong Kok, then the street called Cedar Street, a building on the street, an apartment in the building, a room in the apartment, a desk in the room, the person sitting in front of the desk, the pen in the person’s hand and the piece of paper in front of him, and the 1:1 projection of fantasy on this piece of paper.

  This is an image of individual autonomy made possible for me by a map on a 1:1 scale with a three feet by three feet square border. It is my personal unitopia on paper.

  15

  OMNITOPIA

  The place that I have never succeeded in finding is omnitopia. In the eleventh century, the monk Heinrich of Mainz (1021–1063), in an essay on religion and geography, quoted the concept of “omnitopia” allegedly taken from the ninth book of Geographia by the Greek scholar Ptolemy (90–168).

  Ptolemy’s monumental work consists of eight books in total. It deals with techniques of mapmaking and theories of projection, lists the longitude and latitude bearings of eight thousand place-names, and includes a world map and twenty-six regional maps. In his map of the world, the longitudes and latitudes are drawn as curved lines in order to rectify the distortion of the earth’s curvature when projected on a flat surface. Ptolemy’s maps have all been lost; the earliest extant manuscript of his world map is a reconstruction dating from 1561. As for the extra book, that is, the ninth volume, it remains pure hearsay, as Heinrich’s essay is the only document we have that quotes directly from it. Europe was then in the dark ages: for having challenged the credibility of the Christian orbis terrae map and proposing the concept of omnitopia, Heinrich was accused of heresy and burned at the stake. Along with his life, his essay was also reduced to ashes, its surviving contents scattered among the writings of Renaissance scholars.

  Since it is impossible to trace the idea of the omnitopia to its origin, we can only make conjectures based on its literal meanings. The first part, “omni,” leads to associations with “omniscient,” “omnipotent,” and “omnipresent.” This allows the bold postulation that omnitopia is a place where nothing is secret, hidden, or overlooked; where nothing is impossible; and where there are no barriers or limitations in time and space. In other words, it is a “total” place, with no leakage, no outside, and no opposite. Since the meaning of “total” must be monistic, its self-contradictions inevitably make it untenable, for it has to include within itself its own boundary, and in this act of inclusion it is bound to create new boundaries. The outside of total is forever an even bigger total, ad infinitum.

  There is perhaps another explanation that is more direct (and although it appears superficial, its meaning is in fact profound), that is, to interpret omnitopia as a comprehensive, total map. Imagined in the abstract, an omnitopia is a place that theoretically includes all places. Imagining such a place can be realized only through mapmaking, especially atlases. In other words, it is the ultimate fantasy of a map or atlas encompassing all geographical facts. I thus infer that in the supposedly long-lost ninth book of Ptolemy’s Geographia, there must be an elucidation of the concept of omnitopia, along with an insanely arrogant and wholly unrealistic practical application: a total map that represents all existing and possible landforms in the entire world.

  Cartographic circles, however, must see such a conjecture about Ptolemy’s work as a blasphemy against the fine tradition of scientific surveying and mapmaking. To picture the great mapmaker of the Greco-Roman world (who is also a pioneer in the history of world cartography) as a maniac suffering from delusions is the height of impertinence. It also shows ignorance and disrespect toward the cultural heritage of Greek civilization in astronomy, geography, and mathematics. We may wonder if the first to lose his reason was Heinrich, who chanted hymns as the flames consumed him. He was sentenced to death because of his belief that omnitopia was God’s vision of the world. The more important background factor, however, was his conviction that man could achieve God’s vision through reason and science, and that the communion
of vision thus achieved was entry into paradise. Omnitopia, in the end, is a geographic synonym for paradise.

  Unconsciously we have always yearned to be one with God. A map is no longer a utilitarian instrument but an epistemological translation of our knowledge of the world. The translated text will ultimately replace the limited vision of our individual selves, becoming a panoramic virtual space in our psyche and spirit, unfolding within our minds a total map that stretches into infinity. In this way we transcend ourselves and lose ourselves, for we are everywhere and nowhere.

  It is said that at the moment of death, Heinrich did not falter for an instant in praise of God, the omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.

  PART TWO

  The City

  16

  MIRAGE: CITY IN THE SEA

  The legendary city of Victoria was, like Venus, born from the waves of the sea. It is not known how it disappeared in the end. The legend thus brings us face-to-face with an archaeological question: by what means can we verify a city’s existence?

  Suppose we have in hand only fragments of accounts written on this city, which taken together cannot be regarded even as a history; suppose we succeed in collecting items alleged to be its remains from all over the world, including wigs, cheap watches, fake high fashion goods, and retouched landscape postcards; yet so long as we cannot find in the boundless ocean the island on which this city was once built, we cannot rule out the possibility that people systematically wove a web of deceit around it, created counterfeit documents, and forged a nonexistent past.

  A map is no different. The remaining maps of Victoria, which vary in quality but abound in quantity, are no guarantee of the city’s existence. On the contrary, they throw doubt on its stability and actuality. Reading them is like tracing a lover’s inner topography. Under those oscillating, ambiguous, indefinite, and yet suggestive expressions, the map reader’s knowledge and imagination are led into a meandering narrative, out of which is woven a novel full of prejudice, jealousy, misunderstanding, perplexity, anxiety, and ecstasy.

  It is said that the island on which this city had been situated was barren and uninhabited. It was located off the southern coast of the Chinese mainland, to the east of the former Portuguese colony of Macao. The maps produced by the Qing dynasty court and its local administration from the fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century testify that the island appeared and disappeared many times for unknown reasons.

  The name of what was said to be a neighboring island called Tai Kai Shan (later known as Tai Yue Shan in Cantonese and Lantao Island in English) was recorded on the “Map of Zheng He’s Voyages,” collected by Mao Kun and reproduced by his grandson, Mao Yuanyi, in 1621. The first time the name Hong Kong appeared was on the “Coastal Map of Guangdong” drawn by Guo Fei in the late sixteenth century. “Hong Kong” never appeared again until the mid-nineteenth century but was replaced by the name Hung Heung Lou Shan (red incense burner mountain) or Hung Heung Lou Shun (red incense burner guard post) in maps drawn by the Chinese. Tradition has it that the British were the first to refer to the whole island as Hong Kong, for in the early days when British sailors fetched water on the south side of the island, the local people told them in their Tanka dialect that the name was Hong Kong (although in fact this name referred only to a nearby village). Another theory maintains that the name came from the production and export of incense in the region, in which, in those days, a tree called kuan-heung was extensively cultivated. There are others who believe that the island did not even exist before the arrival of the British, and that the tale of sailors inquiring about the name was pure fiction.

  After Guo Fei’s “Coastal Map of Guangdong,” the island made its appearance in maps attached to documents like A Record of the Countries of the Sea (1774), by Chen Lunjiong, Gazetteer of San-on County (1819 edition), and Guangdong Provincial Gazetteer (1864 edition), all under the name Hung Heung Lou. That name, however, is completely absent in other contemporaneous maps like the “Area Map of Guangzhou Prefecture” in the imperial encyclopedia Synthesis of Books and Illustrations Past and Present (1723), Atlas of China in the Qianlong Reign (1769), and Magistrate Chen’s “Map of the Waterways of Guangdong,” nor was there any mark to indicate the island’s existence. In “Map of the Waterways of Guangdong,” for instance, one can see the names of places near Hong Kong, such as Kowloon Police Post, Tuen Mun Guard Post, Tai Yue Shan Fort, Cheung Chau, Tseung Kwan O, Tai O, and Kat O, but there is no trace of Hung Heung Lou, and there is only a small island named Chek Chue near its supposed location.

  Hung Heung Lou was for several hundred years visible at some times and at other times invisible. Some say that the actual existence of Hung Heung Lou began when Captain Belcher drew his nautical chart of Hong Kong in 1841. From then on, the small island was officially called Hong Kong, and with the exception of the continuous development of the city on its northern coast, the name, shape, and position of the island remained unchanged until recent speculations about its resubmergence. So if map readers today attempt to unearth the remains of the city of Victoria in the vast ocean of maps, what they are after might possibly be to perpetuate a love story born of imagination.

  17

  MIRAGE: TOWERS IN THE AIR

  A description of Victoria can be found in the book The Shipwreck of Kino from Bishu.

  In August 1841, a Japanese seaman by the name of Kino set off from Toba for Edo on the ship Eiju Maru, a vessel that could carry a load of 1,000 piculs and had sails measuring seventy-four feet. A storm at a far-off sandbank in midjourney broke the mast so that the ship drifted out to sea. After a hundred days adrift on the open sea, the entire crew of thirteen men were rescued by the Spanish ship Esperanza and taken to California in the United States. After many twists and turns, Kino was finally able to get passage to Macao on a Portuguese vessel and then left Macao by way of Hong Kong to make his way north along the coast to return to his own country. Kino arrived back in Japan in 1846, but, on suspicion of having violated the policy of national seclusion, he was detained and interrogated. He was finally released and returned to his home district of Bishu. The frontier defense authorities then sent officers to make a second investigation, and they made a record of what he had seen and heard in foreign countries. This became the text that is now included in the Edo Anthology of Stories of Shipwrecks.

  Here follows an excerpt from The Shipwreck of Kino from Bishu concerning Victoria. Implausible passages in the text may be due to Kino’s blurred memory or the result of the investigators’ fertile imaginations.

  To the east of Macao is a barren island occupied by the British, named Hong Kong. Hong Kong is over twenty ri square. Bare hilltops rise 6,000 to 6,200 feet. The harbor faces north and is wide with a narrow entrance. It was afternoon when we sailed into the harbor, and a spring mist obscured the surroundings and created an air of loneliness that made us think that it was truly right to call it a barren island. The ship moved slowly and we could catch indistinct glimpses of several hundred large ships moored in the harbor, including Chinese and foreign merchant vessels and British naval vessels. Everything was still, as if it had been there hundreds of years. As we approached the southern shore of the harbor, the mist was torn apart, there was a great sound of steam whistles, the waves surged, and the ships moved back and forward busily, like suddenly awakened sea creatures. In the swirling fog along the shore, buildings thrust upward and several thousand residences lined the harborside, row upon row of houses of all shapes and sizes. Pushing aside the waves, the slowly emerging buildings reached high up on the steep hillsides. As we drew closer, the seawater seemed to recede from the shoreline, so that an orderly arrangement of streets was revealed, with endless streams of hawkers and fishermen. Everywhere hills had been leveled and large-scale construction was taking place with stone masons, bricklayers, plasterers, carpenters, and coolies numbering in their thousands. The work and activity were a confused and noisy turmoil, like ants building an anthill. Berthing and stepping ashore on
that land born of the sea made us feel as if we had been set adrift. The vast space before us created a dreamlike scene like someone lost at sea.

  The approximate time of Kino’s passage by Victoria would have been March 1845.

  18

  POTTINGER’S INVERTED VISION

  Of the existing maps of Victoria, “Pottinger’s Map” should be the earliest. This map is said to have been drawn up in 1842 by Sir Henry Pottinger, the first governor in Victoria. The street plan and land allotment boundaries on the island’s northern shore are all shown. The design is sketchy but somewhat more careful than a draft, while its dimensions and topography differ in many places from later maps of the area.