Gaomi — Gaomi Map Poster & Print

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Gaomi Map Poster & Print

Gaomi lies on the broad plain of eastern Shandong, within the prefecture-level city of Weifang, and from above it is a study in straight lines. Wide roads run north–south and east–west, dividing the urban area into large, regular blocks. Beyond the built-up edge the grid simply continues as field boundaries and village lanes, so the map shows a city growing directly out of the agricultural land around it.

The terrain is almost entirely level, which is why the street pattern reads so cleanly on paper. A railway crosses the city, and small rivers and irrigation channels cut thin diagonals through the otherwise orthogonal layout. Newer districts toward the edges are laid out on a larger scale than the older centre, and that shift in block size is one of the more interesting details in the drawing.

Gaomi is widely known as the hometown of Mo Yan, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature, whose novels, including Red Sorghum, return again and again to a fictional Northeast Gaomi Township. The area is also known for folk arts such as paper-cutting and New Year woodblock prints. A Gaomi map poster offers the real ground behind that literary landscape, rendered in quiet black and white.