Talk:Beijing

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Contents

[edit] Pronunciation, k or j?

Article says "It was known to foreigners as Peking before China standardized on Pinyin for transliteration". Isn't it still called Peking (or a variant) in some languages other than English, e.g. French? -- SJK

My E-F dictionary says "Beijing", but I'm pretty sure "Pékin" is more common. For instance this wikipedia article and this article in Le Monde. "Běijīng" may be the standard pinyin transcription, but that doesn't obligate the whole world to use it. --Brion
Yes, "Pékin" is still the most commonly used form in French. "Péking" was used in French until approximately the beginning of the 20th century. Germans still commonly use "Peking". -User:Olivier
Actually Peking is the old name. Beijing is the modern one.

Comment: Turns out that it is not so much old vs new as two different systems. "Peking" is the Postal Romanization which (believe it or not!) was intended to be pronounced (roughly)"Bayjing." The name in Chinese did not change, only the standard romanization of it, except between 1927-1949, when, as the article correctly reports, the name of the city was changed to "Beiping," in Postal, which for once turns out to be the same in Pinyin: "Beiping."

Likewise the Postal Romanization was "Nanking," now in pinyin is "Nanjing." No change in the pronunciation. "Canton" is also PR, which so far as I can see, has a very distance relation to any pronunciation in Chinese.

If nobody objects, I will adjust the wording in the article.

Actually the name Beijing means Northern capital. The name Peking comes from when Beijing was not the capital of China so the name is changed to Northern city. The name Beijing is the correct official name. No one who speaks Mandarin will call Beijing, Peking. They're written and pronounced differently in Chinese.Kwazyutopia19 21:55, 24 September 2006 (UTC)KwazyUtopia19

Peking and Nanking are reflections of an earlier pronunciation of the names. In Manchu, Beijing is called Beging, which reflects the pronunciation of the name when the Qing dynasty was established. Jiangsu province was called Giyangsu, which is close to postal spelling Kiangsu. In many Chinese dialects, this shift from "k to j" has still not taken place. So it is not a question of right or wrong. As far as I am concerned, I have never heard anyone pronouncing Peking as "Bayjing".
As for Canton, it is an imperfect rendering of Guangdong. Apparently the first Europeans to arrive confused the name of the province with the name of the city. Such things happen. Chinese and many other languages, still refer to the Netherlands as Holland 荷兰, which is actually only a part of the Netherlands.--Niohe 22:05, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hakka

Remove statements referring to Hakka. I think that pretty much every Chinese dialect except for Mandarin would use a k for a j sound. -- Roadrunner

[edit] Pronunciation in various spoken languages

According to CCDICT: Mandarin (Pinyin), Bei3 Jing1; Cantonese (Jyutping), Baak1 Ging1; Hakka (Lufeng), Pet7 Kin1; Taiwanese (Tongyong), Pak1 Keng1. It's most likely attributed with one of the southern dialects. -Taoster

[edit] Mongolian name of Beijing during the Yuan dynasty

What is the Mongolian name for Beijing during the Yuan/Mongolian Empire? --Kaihsu Tai 18:29, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC) ?? or Khanbalik

Tatu or Dadu

[edit] A Little History Unknown to Many

The metropolitan area of Beijing has been settled in the first millennium BC and the capital of Kingdom Yan (燕) was established there, and named it Ji (蓟). Ji has often been claimed as the beginning of Beijing; but in reality the city has been abandoned no later than the 6th century AD. The exact location of Ji is not clear despite numerous claims of its "discoveries" in recent years. During the great Tang and Song dynasties, only townships existed in this area. By the early 10th century, Kingdom Liao set up a "secondary capital" in the city proper, and called it Nanjing ("the Southern Capital"). Jing Dynasty that annexed Liao and ruled the northern China built its capital there, called Zhongdu (中都), or "the Central Capital". The Mongol force burned Zhongdu to the ground in 1215 AD and rebuilt its own "Grand Capital" (大都) to the north of the Jin capital in 1267 AD, which is the true beginning of Beijing. In 1403 AD, the 3rd Ming emperor Zhu Li, who just grabbed the throne by killing his brother after a bloody civil war and moved the capital from southern China to his own power base in the north, renamed the city Beijing (北京), or "Northern Capital".

[edit] Oversize at 32K

My recommendation: Like I've created with the Ring Roads of Beijing and other such sub-pages, maybe we could move the Universities into such a section? I could then write something to start with (at the section on the Beijing page), such as a bit on famous universities, keep the "under the Min. of Edu." list, and move the entire list (with other entries) into the sub-pages.

As this is a big overhaul and affects stuff I (DF08) did not write, I'd like to gauge consensus before moving the whole thing. If within about a week there is no opposition or if I get a response to the tune of "do it", I'm going ahead; or someone else may take the lead ahead of time.

--DF08 20:46, Aug 13, 2004 (UTC)

Go right ahead. Colipon 02:34, 14 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] map

I am going to make similar district map of Beijing that I did of Shanghai (see different districts) using several scanned tourist maps as a base. Any comments? if not, maps will appear here sometime.

[edit] Architecture -- image problems

Some images appear in such a way that one picture occupies a whole new line, while two others get a new line on its own too. There's like an unneeded line; three pictures that could appear on one line now take up two lines. If anyone could get this sorted I'd appreciate it deeply -- I wish that space was used properly on the page. Thanks. --DF08 (English) 13:14, 10 Oct 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Style Problems

IMO one of the "owners" of this page needs to edit the text with an eye to Wikipedia style. Phrases like "Beijing is a true transportation hub" need to be ditched in favour of neutral, factual statements like "Beijing is one of the major transportation hubs in northern China". The first version is in a style often called "Comglish," (for obvious reasons), which is itself a subset of Chinglish. The last time I attempted to edit the page in this fashion it was summarily reverted, which is why I post these comments here, rather than doing it myself. --Shannonr 05:54, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Attempted NPOVisation of Beijing:Tourism and Beijing:Transportation. I did a fair bit of those to start with. I've tried to view the article from different perspectives; however, if something caught your eye without catching mine, "talk" away; they'll hopefully be fixed. --DF08 10:17, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] History

Actually, the English name "China" is misleading because the chinese zhongguo is a relatively recent term and China comes from the Chin dynasty. The page is to China-centric. For example, Dadu was part of the Mongolian empire, not China at the time. The so called "yuan dynasty" is an ethnocentric concept.

Peking is much more natural in English and is not a mistransliteration. Much of China still pronounces it with a hard [k] sound. The US Government decided to adopt the pinyin transcription but that does not mean that all English speaking regions did the same.

It was the Mongol rulers themselves who called their government the "Yuan Dynasty" and themselves the emperors of "Yuan".
Beijing is the overwhelmingly common spelling that is used today by the English language. Google yields 15.7 million results for Beijing and 3 million results for Peking. So it is clear which one is more accepted.
And finally, [k] is not the pronunciation used in Standard Mandarin, nor the Beijing dialect, nor something like 90% of the dialects of Mandarin, Jin, Wu, or Xiang. It is preserved in Cantonese, Hakka, Min, and Gan (some parts). Considering that the [k] in "Peking" is not used by the standard language of China, nor the natives of Beijing, nor everyone else in China (except for something like five or six provinces), it's not precisely "much" of China that pronounces it with a hard [k] sound. -- ran (talk) 02:09, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)

Why is the English name of a city changed when the foreign (i.e. Chinese) name changes? Do we call Rome - Roma? Do English speakers take offence that in French England is called Angleterre? Avalon, 13:32 30 July 2005 (UTC)

Who knows? It's not even a change, per se, just a change in pronunciation. I wonder if it corresponded with the change from Beiping back to Beijing? After all, other name changes were acknowledged. No one calls Tokyo Edo today, for example. Nik42 06:56, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The population of Beijing

Does anyone know where to find out the population of the urban area of Beijing? Most websites I've come across so far, including official statistics sites, seem to give only the population of the municipality. But I doubt that's what people are looking for if they want to compare, say, the populations of the biggest cities in the world.

I'm tempted to get the stat off a "city ranking" site, but I don't know where they got their numbers from in turn, so it seems kinda sketchy to me.

The same question can be asked for Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, as well as Guangzhou, Wuhan, Nanjing, etc... -- ran (talk) 05:12, Mar 2, 2005 (UTC)

Is there any statistics for a specific district, a county-level city or a contry of a municipality/prefecture? — Instantnood 10:56 Mar 1 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, those stats are given, but they aren't very useful... Chaoyang, Haidian, and Fengtian districts are not entirely occupied by the Beijing urban area, which also spills into the periphery of districts like Tongzhou, Daxing, Changping and Shunyi. So it's not as simple as adding up the populations of a few districts. -- ran (talk) 01:56, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

On the other hand, I'm tempted to just sum up the urban populations of the inner eight districts and give it as an "estimate" of urban Beijing's population. Not exactly the most accurate way to do it but I can't think of any alternatives. Thoughts? -- ran (talk) 06:17, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Hmmm perhaps just a list of the districts by population, and tell people how urbanised each of them is.. :-P — Instantnood 12:07 Mar 3 2005 (UTC)

How about giving the population of each district in the demographics section, then showing how an estimated value of, say, about 7.5 million, is arrived at? Then we can put that into the infobox, with an asterisk and a link to the demographics section. -- ran (talk) 17:45, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Names

Seoul was also named Gyeongseong during Japanese occupation. — Instantnood 11:03 Mar 1 2005 (UTC)

... Yeah, and Kaifeng was called Dongjing, and Changchun was called Xinjing, and so forth... but I don't think we can put every example in there :| -- ran (talk) 01:56, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Perhaps just add Seoul will be fine. It is one of the largest cities in East and Southeast Asia, and is probably as well known as Hanoi. — Instantnood 12:08 Mar 3 2005 (UTC)

Sure. -- ran (talk) 17:44, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Phonological shift

According to the article the /kh/ sound shifted to /ts/ sound during the Qing Dynasty. When did this happen exactly? Did it happen after the French arrived? — Instantnood 11:06 Mar 1 2005 (UTC)

I don't know... but it must have happened pretty recently, considering the prevalence of spellings like Peking, Chungking, Nanking, Kiangsu, Fukien, Kirin, etc... these spellings must have been adopted when the standard language of China (be it the Beijing dialect, or Nanjing dialect, or whatever other dialect) still contained the /k/ sound in those words. -- ran (talk) 01:56, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)
No. It didn't happen recently. Spellings like Peking existed when the shift had already occurred. The "k" was supposed to be pronounced /ts/ in Beijing while pronounced /k/ in southern dialects. The spellings were intended to be somewhat "universal." --Naus 21:12, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't agree and I would like to see a source from Qing stating that Peking is supposed to be pronounced /ts/. The fact that many of these sound shift are quite recent, by Chinese standards, is reflected in many Manchu spellings of Chinese names, which were fixed in the early seventeenth century. For instance, in Manchu, Beijing is called Beging and Jiangsu is spelt Giyangsu. As for Peking, one of the reasons why Peking stuck for so long is that this spelling was used by many Jesuit missionaries in their works on China.--Niohe 21:37, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Fukien should be transcripted based on the Min languages. Would it be possible that the names were romanised based on the spoken variations of southern China, but not the local prounication of each of the places? The Europeans who came to China mostly arrived at the southern provinces. — Instantnood 12:11 Mar 3 2005 (UTC)

Would it be possible that the names were romanised based on the spoken variations of southern China, but not the local prounication of each of the places? -- what do you mean? So we romanize all place names in Guangdong (let's say) according to Cantonese? What about, say, Chaozhou? Would it become Chiuchow (Cantonese), instead of Teochew (the local pronunciation)? And what about places in Zhejiang and Jiangsu? Do we use a Romanization scheme for Wu and move (say) Shanghai to Zanhei? -- ran (talk) 17:14, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

Well I said.. the Europeans who arrived in China via the southern provinces.. and therefore I was suggesting the possibility that they romanised place names based on southern spoken variations, and ended up with a "k" in "Peking". — Instantnood 17:34 Mar 3 2005 (UTC)

Oh... I see what you mean... well, but there are also examples like "Nanking". Clearly it has the "k", but in a southern dialect the front part would be "Nam", not "Nan", giving "Namking" instead. And then there's "Foochow", which would be something like "Fookchow" or "Hokchiu" in a southern dialect. (Foo without the -k is quite typically Mandarin.) Similarly there's "Kirin" (Jilin), which would probably be "Katram" or "Kitrim" (with -t and -m) in a southern dialect.
These are just guesses based on what I observe though. Some academic references on how these spellings came about would certainly be welcome. -- ran (talk) 17:43, Mar 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Audio file

I'm trying out one of the new audio files in Mandarin from Commons in conjunction with the Audio Template. Lemme know what you think. - karmosin 01:36, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

Not bad at all..... thanks for the addition. :)
Just one thing though: the first syllable sounds like it's in the 4th tone rather than the 3rd? -- ran (talk) 02:14, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Crapola. You're right. I kinda do a 3rd, but the pitch is too high to make it clear enough. Second try, then... - karmosin 03:03, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
Much better :) -- ran (talk) 03:17, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Historical usage

Does it make sense to say that the Nationalists changed the name to "Beiping"? Obviously this is the Pinyin transliteration of what they changed the name to. But they themselves, writing in English, would have said they were changing the name to "Peiping," right? When dealing with periods when the Chinese themselves were translating the names of their cities in Postal Pinyin, using the current transliteration exclusively seems awkward. john k 15:38, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

A good question... perhaps the only way is to give both pinyin and Wade-Giles. -- ran (talk) 16:07, Mar 4, 2005 (UTC)
The English name used by then should be used. In English the adoption of Hanyu Pinyin by the PRC was in effect a name change. However, names prior to Postal Pinyin would perhaps be best be standardised by Hanyu Pinyin. In other words, the name of Beijing should be written as Dadu for the Yuan Dynasty, Yingtian during the early Ming Dynasty, Peking when Postal Pinyin was introduced, Peiping during the KMT era, and Beijing when Hanyu Pinyin was introduced and adopted by the UN. Is that the rule, and a simple one? :-D — Instantnood 16:21 Mar 5 2005 (UTC)

Seems a bit complicated. john k 17:07, 5 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Transportation

I corrected a link about railways to say that Beijing had railways to all of China (and obviously there will be provinces and islands that aren't reached by rail travel), rather than just Mainland China. Mainland China is defined as China, without the two SAR. The article does say in the next paragraph that Beijing serves Hong Kong. Instantnood reverted my change. HK travel does require the visitor to go through the rigors of international travel (immigration, customs, etc) but it is still part of China. It makes little sense to exclude a region in one paragraph to then mention it in the other. Is there concensus to revert this correction? SchmuckyTheCat 02:31, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Neighbourhoods section

Neighbourhoods section seems unneeded，right？--Yongxinstudy 03:52, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

...How come? It can certainly use some expansion. -- ran (talk) 04:01, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What is the population of Beijing?

I don't mean the entire municipality, I mean the "urban area" of Beijing - what you would call the "city". Unfortunately statistics bureaus in China don't seem to give this figure. -- ran (talk) 23:01, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation/language section

(Chinese: 北京; pinyin: Běijīng; Wade-Giles: Pei-ching; Postal System Pinyin: Peking)

Would it be better if the Postal System Pinyin transcription came before Wade-Giles in this article, as Peking is surely much more common that Pei-ching? (I realize a template has been used but we can remove the template and input this manually if anyone supports this move). Thanks ~ Dpr 07:45, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Revisions

I undertook several extensive edits of this page. If I've made any missteps, please identify or correct them or leave a message on talk page. Hope I wasn't too disruptive. (I also tried to word the administrative divisions section in such a way that a reader unfamiliar with China's administrative structure could clearly understand it). --Dpr 10:31, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

The separate paragraph describing Beijing as one of 4 municipalities and its history as a municipality has been returned to its former position as second paragraph in the lead section, after I had moved it down to the last position. Is there a strong argument that it should be the second paragraph rather than closer to the bottom? I had moved it in trying to establish a pyramidal structure with information of greatest interest to the reader at the top and decreasing in importance on the way down.
Also, does anyone else feel it would be beneficial to place the Romanized Chinese names alongside English names for certain sites, such as Tiantan (Temple of Heaven), given that Chinese-language names are frequently used to identify the sites and that this would provide a broad coverage to understand those sites? --Dpr 19:58, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

Is there a consensus as to whether the hutong-siheyuan section should be under the Culture section or Architecture section? Likewise, what about the placement of language and Beijing stereotypes? Language certainly makes sense under Demographics. Also, if contributors choose revert to the original placement of the sections that I moved, would it be possible to still retain the internal textual edits that I made? --Dpr 05:06, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

Ran did remove that separate paragraph regarding municipalities. His tack was even better: best not to have that section at all. Thanks! --Dpr 06:38, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Names

Instantnood, Ran, others: a propos of your discussion of Names above (from March), does anyone think that for the sake of conciseness we could eliminate one or two names from the list of examples of Asian cities containing the element jing ("capital")? --Dpr 15:40, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Renminbi

Would it be agreeable to replace all references to renminbi with RMB, with the exception of the first time it appears in an article or a section? I'd like to apply it here, but does anyone else think we can do it across Wikipedia? For one thing, it's much shorter and probably easier on the eye. Thanks. --Dpr 02:57, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Strange (quasi-vandalistic) edit

What was 209.151.141.187 doing? --Dpr 01:15, 10 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tourism section

The following paragraph,

Despite the turmoils of the late 19th and 20th century — including damage caused by the European military intervention, the Japanese invasion of WWII and the Cultural Revolution — and the recent intense urbanisation and transformation, including the demolition of Hutongs, Beijing still maintains tourist attractions that are rich in history.

was recently changed to

Despite the turmoils of the late 19th and 20th century, as well as the damages caused by the European military intervention, the Japanese invasion of WWII, the Cultural Revolution, and the recent incessant urbanisation and transformation, including the demolition of Hutongs, Beijing still maintains tourist attractions that are rich in history. (emphasis mine)

1) "Damages" should revert to "damage." The English word "damage" is a non-count noun, meaning that it does not need to be expressly pluralized (adding "s") to be able to refer to more than one instance of that thing. The word "damages" typically refers to legal monetary reparations.
2) "Incessant" has replaced "intense." I will not say "intense" is the only appropriate word, as there may be others, but I don't feel "incessant" is appropriate here. It seems overly literary and not technical enough for an encyclopedia, in this context...and may express POV in the form of emotional emphasis.
3) Should this paragraph-long sentence be restructured? There were originally dashes, as can be seen, to make the structure more readable. Should be dashes be returned, or the sentence alternately restructured in some other way?

If 67.2.145.97 doesn't justify her/his edits with in 7 days, I or anyone else ought to come back and make some of these changes (reversions). Thanks. --Dpr 07:17, 11 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] English/Western name--Romanization

Here 's a fascinating link which can help wrap one's mind around the issue. --Dpr 11:31, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

The above refered to article is a bit nonesensical and seems propagandistic. Might want to take it with a grain of salt. And I'd hardly consider it "fascinating". Pseudotriton 05:46, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article size/structure & Golden Resources

Can we move the History section to its own article and leave only a summary behind...I think we should reduce the length of the article a bit for readers' convenience, primarily by moving information to their own separate pages.
Separately, Greener has added a large section on the new Golden Resources Mall...I think I will create a new article on the Mall and move most of the info there. Her/his additions were a bit unencyclopedic --Dpr 22:09, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Characters

Do we need the Chinese characters on the names of the different universities? I suspect not...in a while if no one disagrees I'll remove them (and if any are not already labeled on the schools' article, I will place them there). --Dpr 05:51, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Partenrships

In the list of city partnerships, there's a ref to Île-de-France. It is not a city, but more like 'région' (a bit like a county in the U.S.) that is made of several cities. Maybe you meant Paris or there's actually a parternship with the whole region. In the first case, the link should be modified, in the second case, the title of the section should be modified (I think it's a bit misleading). I don't know which is correct so I cannot do the edit. Tony 16:45, 4 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Solar Eclipses

Is there a reason why solar elipses gets a whole section in the article for this city? Is there something special about Beijing geographically or culturally that makes a list of solar eclipses particularly relevant when no other city's entry spends so much time on the phenomena? Just wondering, as it seems a bit strange. Ashmoo 07:08, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Laurence Brahm

Are Brahm's "Red Capital" businesses worth mentioning in this article? [1] Simesa 00:06, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Why is there no mention of walking or cycling in this article?

It seems a very, very, curious omission for an article on Beijing. No? --Sf 13:07, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Why mention IPA pronunciation?

Why mention IPA pronunciation here? Maybe because so many people mispronounce "jing"? But those people probably don't know IPA anyway....

--Xihe 08:06, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] BAY-JING

Mention after the IPA blurb that Beijing sounds like "BAY-JING(le bells)" in Enlish. --User:Jidanni 2006-07-19

[edit] Vandalism

The user 4point added the Japanese flag. He does similar thing in Manchu language and Forbidden City. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.18.234.2 (talk)

[edit] It's a zoo

I've read Beijing had world's first zoo, created 1900BC as the House of Intelligence. Trekphiler 02:11, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

There was no Beijing in 1900BC. -- ran (talk) 02:39, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources?

Is this article entirely unsourced? I think someone needs to sort through the external links and determine which of those need to be in a references section. Also, those books that are listed, are they sources for the article or advertising? If they're used as sources, they need to be kept, but if they're ads, they need to go ASAP. This article needs a lot of attention. - Mgm|(talk) 12:40, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Could we get better photos for Beijing please?

Most of the Beijing photos are gray, blurry, and haphazardly taken. Not very professional. Let's find some better photos from Flickr that are Creative Commons licensed. See Shanghai. --Naus 21:09, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

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