Google Earth Community: China - Huangyangtan

The photo with the Chinese press agency’s name on it has kept me busy for a while. I have a few ideas but no solution, so I’d like to hear what the forum might have to contribute.

I have been unable to make a positive match between what is shown in the photo and what we can see in at the Huangyangtan site. It could be due to insufficient resolution. As an example of what I mean, I have assigned an average height of 1.70 meters to the men in the picture. Using them as a ruler, the lake or reservoir shown in the lower-right corner is perhaps 60 cm across. Perhaps we’re unable to see anything that small in Google Earth. We can forget about trying to spot the yellow areas that might represent towns.

And in the true Aksai Chin I have found no area that includes the bodies of water shown in the Xinhau photo. That’s where I begin to wonder whether the photo even comes from the Huangyangtan facility. Further reasons for doubt:

Towns – The photo shows yellow areas that probably represent towns or villages. If that’s the case, the number in this photo exceeds the number of inhabited places in all of Aksai Chin. Nowhere in that region are there 4 – 6 towns within a few km of each other. There are barely that many villages to begin with. And nowadays none of them are more significant than a group of a few buildings. The regional “capitol” is reported to have had 850 – 1600 inhabitants, perhaps at the beginning of the 1900’s, but recent travelers report it is now nothing more than a few military buildings.

Bodies of water in general – As opposed to Tibet proper to the east, Aksai Chin has much less water. There are a number of large lakes, but the area region lacks smaller lakes in groupings like the ones shown in this photo. At a scale of 500:1, which has been mentioned elsewhere, the aforementioned lake would be about 600 meters across, big enough to spot despite most of the region being show only in low-res.

Railroad? – There’s a dashed line shown in the photo which could represent a railroad line. There are none in Aksai Chin.

That leads me to conclude, very unwillingly, that the photo could be from a different facility. That would mean that there’s at least one more scale-model landscape somewhere in China, though not necessarily as large.

I have looked around as much as I can get away with (you might be aware that my wife no longer allows me much time with Google Earth), but have not yet found a region that matches the one in the photo. Perhaps it is, in fact, in Aksai Chin. If someone wants to be a hero, please find it. Here are a few ideas I have that might help to locate it:

Orientation – The daylight, and the length of the mens’ shadows lead me to believe that the picture was taken around midday. Thus the shadows point to the north. The terrain is probably laid out accordingly. Thus we’re looking from the north (NNW, really). That puts the one lake to the west of the largest yellow blob, and the group of 3 lakes to the south of it.

Yellow blobs – Probably towns, as mentioned already. The biggest one has three characters on it. Can any Chinese readers photoshop them clear enough to read them? Three characters means a town name with three syllables (of which there are only a few million).

Roads – The red lines must represent roads. Note that the main ones, as well as the dashed line I take for a railroad, run roughly east – west.

The yellow line – I’m unsure what this could represent. A border, maybe. A lot of borders follow rivers (and that what it looks like in this photo). I looked all along China’s borders but found no match. The Chinese have relatively few rail lines and roads that run parallel and so close to a border, so I’m really unsure about this. On the other hand, of those seven white, numbered things on stilts, six of them are on one side of the yellow line. If they represent approaches to the main town, perhaps they represent defense moves, which would come from the direction China and the town, occupied by the enemy, would be in China, Chinese territory would be on the south side, the enemy on the north. But, again, I found nowhere that matched these and the other criteria.

For anyone who sets off to find the matching region, all I can say is good luck. And any comments to the above are welcome.

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