[quote=“smithsgj”]I’s not just that they can’t read maps. There aren’t maps for huge tracts of Taiwan – not at any sensible scale…[/quote]What scale do you want? The Formosa Road Atlas does a reasonable job at 1:50,000.
forumosa.com/3/viewtopic.php?p=123444#123444)
If you want bigger then look through all the posts on this thread:
[Topographic Maps of Taiwan
[quote=“smithsgj”]One reason people don’t use maps is because they can’t use a gazetteer, ie look up the name of a place. That’s for the same reason they’re not comfortable using Chinese dictionaries or indeed any basic reference materials that have an index.[/quote]Not so. Both the Formosa Road Atlas and my cheapie one-volume 1:100,000 road map have gazeteer-type lists at the back. The former has 16 large pages of it.
I don’t really get your point about dictionaries. It can’t be that difficult to look up characters can it? AFAIK it’s based on the radical and then the number of strokes; surely people get quick at doing that?
On the general point, my subjective impression is that map and geographical awareness seems to be on the increase. And regarding city direction-finding, the majority of people I know would have no problem finding the intersection of two streets, although using compass directions for the specific corner as in Maoman’s example might be more tricky.