The presentation will introduce the use of TEI in a GIS project. "Biographies of Eminent Monks (gaoseng zhuan 高僧專)" is a prominent genre in Chinese Buddhist literature. We use TEI to markup connections between persons, places and dates in these linguistically challenging texts. These nexus points are extracted and used in a GIS database to visualize and analyze the changes in the geographic distribution of Buddhism in China over the centuries. Users should be able to query the system according to person and place names as well as time periods. The queries should answer questions like: "According to the gaoseng zhuan record, which persons mentioned  were at a certain place from 450 to 500 AD?" In the current stage of development answers are visualized via Google Earth. The nexus points in question are referenced to the fulltext of the source.