http://kalimac.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] steepholm 2013-12-21 11:52 pm (UTC)

If they consider their island to be part of Asia, it could be because they are calling Taiwan merely an insular annex to mainland China, which is the official ROC government position.

But that's a political stance. More likely it's because they're using "Asia" as a cultural grouping meaning what we usually call East Asia - China and Taiwan and Japan and Korea and maybe Indochina. And since Turkey is not part of that cultural grouping, that's why they're uncomfortable calling it part of Asia.

Noting the irony that Ankara is right smack in the middle of the territory that the word "Asia" was originally invented to describe.

I wonder how people would have reacted on your visit to Readercon, if, on being asked if you'd ever been to the US (or to "America", whatever that is) before, you said you'd been to Hawaii. Or, if that's not disconcerting enough, Puerto Rico.

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