The Map on the Wall of the Chinese Takeaway

1 point · November 2026

There is a map on the wall of the takeaway near my flat, and it is a map of a city I have never been to and cannot name, because the labels are in a script I cannot read. It has been there for as long as the takeaway has, which is longer than I have lived here. Nobody has ever explained it and I have never asked.

I think about it while I wait for my order. Someone chose that map. Someone carried it here, or had it sent, and framed it, and hung it above the counter where every customer would see it and not one in a hundred would understand it. It is the only decoration in the place. It is not for us.

That is what I find I admire. A thing on a wall that is not for the people looking at it. Most of what is on walls is an argument: buy this, feel that, we are the kind of place that has this on the wall. The map is not arguing. It is a city someone misses, hung where they can see it while they work.

I could ask. I have the sentence ready — where is that? — and I never say it, because the answer would make it a fact, and right now it is the only thing in my week that is not a fact.

Last Thursday I noticed a small pin in it, near the bottom, near what might be a river. I don't know when it went in. I don't know what it marks. I ordered the usual and did not ask about that either.