Postal System Pinyin
In the early 20th century
twentieth century,
China (starting with the dying
Qing Empire) used
Postal (Office) System Pinyin (
Traditional Chinese:郵"式拼音
Pinyin: Yóuzhèngshì Pīnyīn) (unrelated to the modern Hanyu Pinyin), based on
Wade-Giles (in particularly,
Herbert Giles's
A Chinese-English Dictionary) for
postal purposes, especially for
placenames on
letters and
stamps; it was not for universal usage. It uses some already common
European names of Chinese places that override the Wade-Giles system, and incorporate some
dialectal pronunciations.
The postal system was decided after the Imperial Postal Joint-Session Conference (帝國郵電聯席會議) in spring
1906 in
Shanghai.
Main differences with Wade-Giles include:
* Complete lack of
diacritic and accent marks.
*
Chi,
ch'i, and
hsi (pinyin
ji,
qi, and
xi) are represented as either
tsi,
tsi, and
si or
ki,
ki, and
hi depending on historic pronunciation, e.g.,
**
Peking (Pei-ching, Beijing)
**
Tientsin (T'ien-chin, Tianjin)
**
Tsinan (Chi-nan, Ji'nan)
* Unless it is the sole vowel in the syllable, the Wade-Giles
u become
w, e.g.,
**
Ankwo (An-kuo, Anguo)
**
Chinchow (Chin-chou, Jinzhou)
*
Guangdong,
Guangxi, and
Fujian placenames are to be Romanized from the local dialects, such as
Hakka,
Cantonese, and
Min (systems also obtained from Giles'
A Chinese-English Dictionary).
**
Amoy (Hsia-men, Xiamen)
**
Swatow (Shan-t'ou, Shantou)
**
Quemoy (Chin-men, Jinmen)
* Popular pre-existing (from 19th century of earlier) European names for place in China are to be retained, such as those of the
treaty ports.
**
Canton (Kuang-chou, Guangzhou)
See also:
Romanization
