Using ArcView

Each person has a folder in q:/easia/230maps/ , containing the data files necessary to make a map of a part of China. You'll need to follow these steps exactly to set up the maps you'll be working with:

  1. Launch ArcView2 from the Start menu (it may take a few minutes to appear) and choose New Project ("With a new View"). ArcView will ask if you want to add data.
  2. Say yes, or use the button ("Add theme"), and navigate to your folder inside q:/easia/230maps/. Once you've opened your folder, double-click the .shp icon that appears, then click in the square box (top left of the rectangle) to see your piece appear --it's a set of counties, in most cases two or more provinces of China.
  3. Use the button again, but this time go UP a level from your folder, to the '230maps' folder, and double-click the icon for 'counties.shp'. Turn that layer on, click on its rectangle to make it 'active', and find and use the button for 'Zoom to active theme(s)' to see the map of all of China's counties
  4. Click and drag the rectangle with your piece of China so that it's above the 'Counties.shp' rectangle. You'll see your piece in its national setting.
  5. Now follow the same basic procedures to add the 'provinces' layer, which will be useful to most in identifying what's what.
  6. Double-click the 'Provinces.shp' rectangle, then double-click the colored rectangle (which opens the 'Fill Palette'), change it from 'filled' to 'transparent', and open the Color Palette (the paintbrush icon)
  7. On the Color Palette, choose 'outline' from the drop-down selector, and click on an outline color for your province(s). Click 'Apply' to see the results, and close the Color Palette

Next, you'll add the 1990 census data, in 3 iterations of the same procedure:

  1. Go to the Window menu and choose 'Untitled' (the Project window will appear);
  2. from the 'Project' menu choose 'Add table' and navigate to the 'Easia' folder.
  3. Find 'chinaad1.dbf', hold down the SHIFT key, click on 'chinaad1', 'chinaae1', and 'chinaag1', and click the OK button. This will load these three .dbf files into your project.
  4. Use the 'Window' menu to go to the 'chinaad1' table, and click on the column label that says 'Gbcenmg' (top left hand corner of the spreadsheet).

  5. Use the 'Window' menu to go to 'View1'
  6. use the button to see the TABLE that lies behind the .shp file for your provinces.
  7. Locate and click on the 'Code_9071' column label, and note that the JOIN button turns from grey to black.
  8. Click the JOIN button, and wait while ArcView JOINs the two tables.
  9. Use the 'Window' menu to go to the 'chinaae1' table,
  10. click on the column label that says 'Gbcenmg' .
  11. Use the 'Window' menu to go to 'View1' and use the 'Open theme table' button to see the spreadsheet. The 'Code_9071' column will be active already, so click the JOIN button to add this dataset.
  12. Use the 'Window' menu again to do the same thing once more, using the 'chinaag1' table and JOINing it. Now use ArcView's FILE menu and choose 'Save Project As...'.
  13. Scroll through the "Attributes of [yourpiece].shp" to see the added values from the three JOINed tables.

Navigate to your /anth/ folder and name the Project ('map1.apr' might be a good choice). This file will store the steps so that you can open the map again later.

These variables you have added are decoded in an index page which you'll need to refer to when constructing maps with the data (it's linked on the course page: '1990 Census Variables for China'). See also the page of alternate spellings to familiarize yourself with the orthographic niceties.

OK, so you can make maps, and you have heaps of data that may turn out to be revealing... but (a) how do you actually do it, and (b) how do you save and display what you've done?

Let's consider (b) first, just to be perverse: One method for saving and displaying maps made with ArcView is to capture the screen and then use PhotoShop to annotate and save the map. This has the advantage of being pretty quick. Here are the steps:

  1. With your ArcView project displayed on the desktop, hit the 'Print Screen' button to put the screen image onto the Clipboard.
  2. From the Windows Start menu, select Programs, then Adobe, then PhotoShop5.5 and wait while it loads.
  3. Once things have settled down and you see a grey screen, hit <Control><n> (a shortcut for "New") and you'll see a 'New' palette offering you an image size of 1024 x 768 pixels.
  4. Click 'OK' and hit <Control><v> to paste the Clipboard image into the space provided.
  5. Now use PhotoShop's Rectangular Marquee Tool to define the area you want to save as an image. I suggest that you keep the map's Legend, showing the values of the colors.
  6. Save the outlined area to the Clipboard with <Control><c> ('Copy'), do <Control><n> to get a New window again (and notice that its size is NOT 1024x768 pixels), click 'OK', and then do <Control><v> to paste the Clipboard's contents into that new window. So far so good.
  7. The next thing you'll do is SAVE this image to your /anth/ folder, but first you'll need to FLATTEN it.
  8. From PhotoShop's Layer menu, choose 'Flatten Image'.
  9. THEN you can go to PhotoShop's File menu, choose 'Save As...', navigate to your /anth/ folder, and save the image as a .jpg or .gif, naming it so you can find it again (like 'xhhold.jpg' for "mean household size"). Accept what PhotoShop gives you for Image Options. For reasons unknown to me it's necessary to name the file without the .jpg extension --let PhotoShop fill that in.
  10. This puts the saved image where you can include it on a web page, using the Image button in FrontPage. You'll need to specify the image's whole URL, like http://home.wlu.edu/~yourusername/anth/xhhold.jpg). Try this on a new page (using FrontPage) and save the page as pshop1.html in your /anth/ folder. Make sure you can open the page with your browser.
You'll need to do this a few times to build confidence, but it will make your maps much more eloquent. When you're through trying it all out, close PhotoShop and say NO to saving the image --it's your original screen capture and isn't useful for anything.

Now what about using ArcView to explore the data? Follow the steps described here to make a Web page with maps of ethnicity for your piece of China.