40 Degrees North Landmark

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of Claude.)

Yesterday I saw yihong’s tweet:

这个人真的太有趣了，读到这样的博客，自然而然的开心一天。https://t.co/8vjrZUvGcn

— yihong0618 (@yihong0618) June 16, 2025

This author documented his spontaneous idea to visit the nearest integer coordinate intersection to his location—30 degrees North, 120 degrees East. This kind of thing doesn’t really have much meaning—latitude at least has some natural significance, while longitude is purely arbitrary human convention—but it’s still quite interesting. This activity has a name: the Degree Confluence Project, with a pretty impressive domain name https://confluence.org/. Don’t confuse it with Atlassian’s Confluence or Confluent.

Speaking of which, it’s embarrassing that I just went to London for fun and didn’t even visit the Prime Meridian at Greenwich Observatory to take a commemorative photo, yet here I am writing a blog post about this topic? However, I have actually been to one of these geographical markers—the 40 degrees North landmark.

The world map rotated 90 degrees is quite interesting.

This monument is located in Beijing Botanical Garden (recently upgraded to National Botanical Garden?!). I remember learning geography as a child, and the teacher said Beijing is located at 40 degrees North latitude. Actually, Beijing’s city center is slightly below 40 degrees, so 40 degrees should be in the northern suburbs. I accidentally discovered this marker when visiting the botanical garden and naturally took photos to commemorate it. I don’t remember what I saw at the botanical garden—it seemed very hot that day, maybe the temperature was also 40 degrees (of course it’s Celsius)? Even a penny-pinching student like me was so hot that I bought a Mengniu Green Sasha ice cream, and I have photographic evidence:

I didn’t go to the botanical garden because I love plants, but because there’s a Reclining Buddha Temple inside, where all senior students—whether job hunting, preparing for graduate school, or applying to study abroad—would go to pray for offers (pun intended, points deducted). Looking through my old photos, my first visit was on October 25, 2009, during a class autumn outing, and I didn’t discover this landmark then. The second visit was during my remaining time in Beijing before going abroad, when I was still filling in gaps in Beijing attractions. On July 21, I decided to go fulfill my vow and unexpectedly discovered this landmark.

I found an online image showing that during construction, the “N” in “N40” was carved backwards?! Of course, the final product was corrected.

I carefully examined my own photo of N-40—why does that N also seem to have a bit of the backwards N feeling? Am I seeing things?

Sometimes looking at old photos is quite interesting. In middle-aged life, when you have a little moment of simple happiness, you should record it promptly.