Friday, February 06, 2009
High and Low vs. North and South
The compass in Chinese is pronounced zhi nan zhen. It literally means "a needle that points south". Not a big deal, I suppose: any straight rod that points North at one end would naturally point South at the other.
But it got me thinking. We follow European tradition with map-drawing: on two dimentional paper, North is "up" by default and South "down. Today we still say to travel "up North" or "down South". So if we extend the High and Low viewpoint to the world map, North is high, and South is low. With respect to Europe, pretty much every single country is south of them, and more south means nearer to the Equator. It is a sad fact that even today, the darker your skin is, the more racial prejudice you encounter.
Of course, it's not an excuse for racism. Katherine Hepburn puts it best in the classic 1967 film Guess Who's Coming for Dinner?
But it got me thinking. We follow European tradition with map-drawing: on two dimentional paper, North is "up" by default and South "down. Today we still say to travel "up North" or "down South". So if we extend the High and Low viewpoint to the world map, North is high, and South is low. With respect to Europe, pretty much every single country is south of them, and more south means nearer to the Equator. It is a sad fact that even today, the darker your skin is, the more racial prejudice you encounter.Of course, it's not an excuse for racism. Katherine Hepburn puts it best in the classic 1967 film Guess Who's Coming for Dinner? "We told her it was wrong to believe that white people were somehow essentially superior to black people. Or the brown or the red or the yellow ones, for that matter. People who thought that way were wrong to think that way. Sometimes hateful, usually stupid, but always wrong."
# posted by HuiMei Chew @ 7:16 PM 
