Old maps are rare, but examples of ancient Chinese cartography in particular are even harder to come by. While volumes of maps were produced in the West in the past century for navigational purposes, map-making remained an exclusive art form in China.
The fact that map collecting in Asian countries is not as popular as in the West makes mainland maps even more scarce in this part of the world.
That perhaps explains why The Vanishing Border - A Retrospective of China and Hong Kong Through Maps, published by Credit Lyonnais Securities (Asia), is a valuable collection of mostly mainland as well as Hong Kong maps.
The brokerage only printed 3,000 bound copies, to mark the territory's return to China. They are not for sale.
'The handover marks the biggest change in China's map since at least the Second World War,' the company's chairman Gary Coull says.
'We felt a retrospective look at Chinese history through maps would be an unusual way to mark the change of sovereignty.' Despite its title, much of the book is devoted to China's maps and history. Only in the last chapter does the book look at local geography and what is meant by 'the vanishing border'.
