Many things, blogging and otherwise, to catch up on after a good holiday. First off, I’m overdue in acknowledging a nice use of my proposed hex grid tile map of Chinese provinces by Claire Chang Liu, posted in the comments on the original post. The below is an excerpt from her data visualization project on Chinese migration, with the tile map illustrating the percentage change in each province’s floating population between 2000 and 2010.

Claire also moves Xinjiang, Qinghai and Tibet down one row compared with my original proposal. Personally I have to say I still like having Xinjiang stick up a bit, it helps maintain the classic chicken-shaped outline of China. But mainly I’m glad the hex tile map is getting a bit of use.