Lab 1: Maps are beautiful!!!

Map 1(http://www.chinahighlights.com/ningbo/map.htm)

I got this map from Chinahighlights.com which is a very famous website providing China travel guides to foreigners. This map shows clusters of famous sightseeing spots in my hometown, in Xikou area. Xikou has very beautiful natural views as well as elegant southern-China style architectures. One thing really good about this map is that it portrays the outlooks of every spot in a succinct way. It simply but precisely draws the main characters of the attractions, including the outlook of the architectures and the main shape of the pool, the waterfall and the cliff. So you can easily recognize where you are when you get to every attraction.I think this map was quite useful for foreigners because they can just recognize the tourist spots by their outlook instead of the confusing Chinese names.





Map 2 (http://www.denverpost.com/food/ci_10096804)

This map is from an article introducing Chinese cuisines on Denverpost.com. China, as we know, has a wide area and different kinds of cultures. For example, cuisines in China vary from geographic positions. From the map, we can see that the dishes in the north, south, west and eastern China are quite different. Take the east part where I come from as an example. Dishes with bamboo shoots are quite common in east China. However, you will not see them in the restaurants in north or west China because these areas are not even suitable for bamboos to grow. When we cook, we use soy sauce a lot, which is also a special tradition. This map is actually quite brief, the real diversity of Chinese cuisines is much more complex. However, we can still learn something from the map and the drawing style of this map is quite cute and interesting.





Map 3 (http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Mi-Oc/Mid-Ocean-Ridges.html#b)

I got this map of ocean floor topography from waterencyclopedia.com. As we can see, ocean ridges are in dark blue and deep trenches are in the lightest blue. From the perspective of earth science, the map shows that lithospheric plates move apart and form oceanic ridges. At the same time, upwelling of asthenosphere injects magma forming oceanic ridges and new oceanic crust. This ocean floor topography map clearly exhibits that mid ocean ridges are parallel to coastlines, which serves as a major convincing evidence to plate tectonic theory. This map attracts me so much because of its beautiful outlook as well as its significant scientific meanings. I actually used this picture as my lock screen wallpaper for a long time.