Nov 17 2007
Where is my brother?
I’ve not long finished a call to my brother in China. He’s just got Skype set up so could call long-distance for ε pennies. He obviously knew exactly where I was calling from, so I made it my task to find out exactly (or as near as I could manage) where he was.
He’s in China, at a university, teaching English. This also means he’s stuck behind the Great Firewall and so his access to the wider internet is a bit restricted. Anonymous proxies are only for the extremely patient. So he might not even be able to access this blog entry while he’s away!
First step, obviously, is China. I made him tell me the region, which turns out to be Shaanxi, which is right next door to Shanxi. See the map for details: Shaanxi is highlighted in green. He was living in the city of Xian which is the only one you can see in that area.
On the satellite photo this isn’t so interesting to look at: Satellite photo of China. The green triangle, as provided by Google Maps, shows where the city of Xian is, hiding amongst the amorphous features of China.
The next stage was to find where he lived in Xian. A bit of search revealed that he was outside the city wall somewhere, in the region of the polytechnic university. The thick green line indicates the city wall.
This was the closest I could get with maps like these, but I needed to get closer. So we tested the limit of Google Maps’ records of China, and we got quite far. This first photo shows essentially the same view as the map above. You can see the outlines of the walls of the city, and the various districts, and a large triangular thing in the bottom left which is a roundabout.
Zooming in to the university quadrant in the bottom left, we find more roads. You can see the roundabout in the corner more clearly, and the millions of buildings in the huge university campus. One of them is the hotel where my brother is staying. But which one?
I was doing all these while we were talking on the phone. He was guiding me down the stages but he couldn’t remember which building the street was his. So I’ve highlighted a few and I’ll send him this photo to help me identify the right one.
The street going off to the left is the main entrance from the west gate to the campus. The streets to the north and south are the main ones for their respective gates. So my brother’s hotel, wherever it is exactly, is near the crossroads of the major streets.