I just finished reading Empress by Shan Sa. The map above depicts my preliminary thoughts on the book, written for myself rather than a public audience. I decided to leave this in because it is part of the learning process. If I had decided to self-edit I would have lost time trying to polish the research notes. I’m trying to get into the habit of writing more each day. I also take the approach that writing is built up in pieces, a dynamic process. So I show you my rough notes, even though I learned much more than these initial observations.

Mapping this entry posed a couple of challenges. Mapbox uses OpenStreetMaps for its map data. The names of places are written in the language of each specific country. When it came to determining a location for this book, I had to figure out where “Long Peace,” the location of the Imperial city was. I confess that I had to turn to Wikipedia and Google Maps for help.

The book also mentions Luoyang where a great deal of the action takes place. This location was easy enough to find because the name of the city has not changed. It was fun to search for the Chinese characters on the OpenStreetMap and match them to the ones found on Google (which also had the English name). I had to rely on the land features – the shapes of the waterways and the cities to locate the correct characters.

The English translation of this book (written in French) was imaginative and poetic. It revealed a fascinating world of gender relations, politics, architecture, aesthetics and power. I also appreciated the roles various religions, and especially Buddhism, played in the lives of the characters.