Maps, like all cultural artifacts, lead long and complex lives. They are drawn and re-drawn, printed and re-printed, and often travel from place to place. Along the way, their meanings and functions change, as do the places they represent. Some maps retain the traces of these journeys.

This is the story of a curious pair of nineteenth-century maps of Beijing that reside in the MacLean Collection. Not only were they produced in different decades and places by different people and methods, but they are also in different languages. And yet, they bear a striking resemblance to one another.