When we arrived in China we were surprised to see a world map that looked like this:
With China smack dab in the middle.
(China has ethnocentrically always called themselves the Middle Kingdom ... the Chinese name for China is Zhongguo, or quite literally middle country.)
But peek at what American's would argue is a normal looking world map:
... and it's not too difficult to figure out which "kingdom" we see in the literal middle of it all.
Not to pick only at Americans (collectively North and South Americans), consider what a European version looks like:
The world, after all is a sphere. And as any middle schooler can tell you, there is a great challenge presented when you try to take that 3D globe into 2D. Representations are off. The Chinese processed map is skewed. The US and European ones are as well. None are expressly right or wrong... they simply differ from each other.
(This is the kind of information that swirls around in our heads as we process how we fit back into a country we haven't been intrinsically a part of for while. For our children, those great students of the 'global classroom,' with friends from many continents and an interest in the world, whether flat or spherical, we think it's important to keep these topics alive as well.)
