Romancing the Three Kingdoms in Google Earth
Contributed by Beth Wilkerson, GIS Specialist
According to Dr. Sherry Mou (Asian Studies), “teaching Chinese culture to students with little or no background in Chinese history and geography can be a challenge”. This fall, students in Dr. Mou’s First -Year Seminar are studying Chinese culture and literature with an added technological twist. Students are not only reading a complete translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but they also are gaining insight into Chinese culture by using Google Earth.
Romance of the Three Kingdoms is a classic Chinese historical novel that was 
written in the fourteenth century. It focuses on events that occurred near the end of the Han Dynasty and during China’s Three Kingdoms era. This massive novel (120 chapters spanning over 2000 pages) includes numerous historical battles and places, and for readers unfamiliar with China, making sense of it all and keeping characters and events straight can be a daunting task. Dr. Mou is helping her students visualize the locations and grasp the cultural significance by using Google Earth to incorporate interactive maps and multimedia content into lessons.
Google Earth is a free, downloadable virtual globe application that allows users to virtually fly anywhere on the face of the Earth. The Google Earth globe is completely covered with spatially referenced aerial 
imagery, and via Google Earth’s navigational tools, users can zoom in to explore specific locations as well as tilt the view to see the terrain or topographical features of the Earth. In addition, Google Earth allows users to create custom content that can be shared with others, in this case, with students in a First-Year Seminar.
In preparation for the seminar, this summer Dr. Mou, Ryan Johnson (DePauw student), and Beth Wilkerson (GIS Specialist) worked to create Google Earth content to accompany the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. In particular, placemarks (point locations in Google Earth) were created for locations mentioned in the novel. Not only do the placemarks provide a geographical frame of reference for what the students are reading, but by embedding images, text, and audio-video clips in the placemark description balloons, students gain a broader comprehension of the culture and its relationship to location. In addition, maps from the novel that portray troop 
movements, battles, or other significant events were spatially overlain on the Google Earth globe. Although the hand-drawn maps may not precisely correspond with exact locations of Chinese landforms and cities, students are able to get a sense of the role of geographical elements (e.g., mountains, plains, rivers) and how those features impacted the characters in the story and the events being described.
Because the seminar is still in progress, it is difficult to ascertain the full impact that Google Earth will have on this course. However, it is safe to assume that the incorporation of this interactive spatial technology will “not only illuminate the old stories, but also provide an exciting inter-textual adventure through the varied interpretations”. [Mou, CLTA Abstract, 2008]
For more information on how you may use Google Earth in your class, contact Beth Wilkerson at bwilkerson@depauw.edu.