Yutuji: a hand-drawn historical atlas with graded sources. Method note, version 1

Yutuji (舆图集, “a collection of maps of the land”) is a Chinese-language series of handdrawn historical maps. Each issue takes one text or one theme, a monk's itinerary, a treatise on crafts, a city's walls, and maps the places, people and dates the sources name. As of 28 September 2026, 9 of 74 planned issues are published. Behind the issues sits one shared set of records: 704 places, 155 people with 615 dated itinerary entries, 393 events and a catalogue of 258 cited works. Every date and fact carries a source string and a grade from A to D. This note describes how the records are made, how the grades are assigned, what the maps do and do not claim, and where the atlas is known to be weak.