Google Earth cannot be wrong...though it can be 15 years late

APRIL 17, 2007: Google Earth has my apologies. For some weeks now, i have been spreading the malignant rumour that they have actually mixed up Songyuan City with another town over 100 kilometres away called Fuyu. I was mistaken.

Well, the rumour i was spreading actually is true but they're not totally culpable or negligent. Maybe just lacking in spies on the ground here in the centre of the world.

See, I recently learned that in 1992, when it was decided that a 'Songyuan City' was to spring from the desert (even these things are consciously decided here), the new 'Songyuan City' authority (it was decided) would supplant two existing 'County' authorities.

Both refused to phase and the one on the south side of the river, being a minority ethnic Mongolian government, clung on and to this day part of the south side of the city is under its jurisdiction. The other, called Fuyu County, had no such privileges.

But, rather than simply dissolving it and giving its personnel positions in the new government, it was forcibly relocated. To a token village more than 100km away. Which is now called Fuyu. It's a bit like Taiwan's government officially being the (pre-communist) "Republic of China", which fled there after Mao's army won the Chinese Civil War.

So, Google Earth is not really wrong in calling Songyuan 'Fuyu'. The Fuyu government did use to administer part of what is now Songyuan, it's just that they were sent packing 15 years ago.