The Woggle-Bug Map

L. Frank Baum's famous Woggle-Bug Map has the Emerald City at the center. Notice - it's admittedly hard to see - the NSEW compass point top right with East and West reversed? The controversy is solved - sort of - if the map is viewed from the North instead of the South, i.e. from Beijing looking South. Of course, now North and South are reversed too. 京

There are many hilarious theories about why Baum reversed East and West, but it was surely deliberate, and my theory is a good as any. Notice the proximity and alignment of the Yellow Brick Road and the rivers in Munchkin Country and Winkie Country.

The official flag of Oz followed the four-color quadrant design seen above. In Chinese mythology, these colors are associated with the Four Guardians and they match the soils of China: the Azure Dragon of the blue soils of the east, the Vermilion Bird of the red iron soils of the south, the White Tiger of the white saline soils of the western deserts, and the Black Tortoise of the black organic soils of the north, along with the Yellow Dragon of the yellow soil of the central loess plateau.

I think this view from Beijing also resonates with the formation of China as an empire for the first time. Below is a map from around 260 BC. The City of Ji in the province of Yan (in red) is what would become Beijing. Back in this time, however, one name for which is The Seven Warring States, Yan was one of the weakest states. Qin (in reddish brown) conquered the other states and its King took the title Shihuangdi, meaning literally the first Emperor of China. The capital of the short-lived Qin dynasty was at Xianyang, which we know today as Xi'an. Its fall led to the rise of the long-lived Han dynasty, at the center of the four quadrants.