Afterword to the compilation of the topographic wall map of the Republic of China

This article documents the compilation of the Topographic Wall Map of the Republic of China, explaining its purpose, source base, correction procedures, printing history, and broader social significance. Unlike ordinary classroom wall maps, which simplify or exaggerate features to facilitate viewing from a distance, this map was designed to support both synoptic observation and detailed consultation. It therefore sought to provide continuous nationwide geographic information useful for administration, scholarship, reading, and the interpretation of current affairs. The author first challenges the widespread claim that China historically “had no maps.” China possessed a long cartographic tradition and had also produced substantial modern surveys; their apparent absence resulted largely from restricted circulation, official secrecy, and uneven public access rather than a complete lack of technical capacity. The compilation drew on a large and heterogeneous body of materials, including military, land-survey, water-conservancy, railway, hydrographic, and geological maps produced in China, as well as surveys and route maps prepared by British, Russian, Japanese, French, German, Indian, and other institutions or explorers. For horizontal and vertical control, the compilers used astronomical and geodetic coordinates, route and triangulation surveys, leveling data, and barometric elevations. Source maps were first reduced to a common scale of 1:1,000,000, superimposed, compared across overlapping and adjoining areas, and selected according to their reliability and systematic consistency. Where mapped features failed to correspond with control points, the relevant areas were divided into triangles and manually transformed through a grid-transfer method, allowing irregular distortions to be adjusted and disparate sheets to be joined. The map employed the Lambert conformal projection to preserve local shape and limit directional error. The author stresses that a national wall map cannot be produced simply by assembling sectional sheets, because every projection entails distortion, and that sound cartographic generalization must proceed from larger-scale maps to smaller-scale products rather than by enlarging deficient small-scale sources. The article also recounts the limited technical capacity of China’s map-printing industry, earlier dependence on Japanese printers, and the eventual cooperation among compilers, scientific institutions, publishers, and domestic printing firms. More broadly, it argues that maps must express geographic facts through determinate positions, distances, directions, and elevations rather than the relative or figurative language permissible in prose. Accurate cartography can guide transportation, construction, travel, resource evaluation, and regional development; it can also correct consequential misconceptions, such as exaggerated estimates of elevation in the Greater and Lesser Khingan ranges. Finally, regular map reading is presented as a means of deepening knowledge of national territory, encouraging travel, and fostering civic confidence, territorial attachment, and national solidarity. While acknowledging lost records, uneven source quality, imperfect controls, and wartime information constraints, the article records a major effort to establish modern Chinese cartography through systematic source synthesis, measurement-based correction, and increasingly autonomous domestic production.