Peking Too, Soon?!??!?!?

[Razors Edge ★]

Suck it e-BIKES!!!!!  Looks like Beijing is giving cyclists their own expressway! Could Peking be next?

 

 

[maddmaxx ★]

Bejing is Peking you idiot.  New name vs former name.

[Razors Edge ★]

1 hour ago, maddmaxx said:

Bejing is Peking you idiot.  New name vs former name.

I create a parody of my own thread JUST FOR YOU and you don't even call me a moran?  WTF?

[maddmaxx ★]

Just now, Razors Edge said:

I create a parody of my own thread JUST FOR YOU and you don't even call me a moran?  WTF?

I didn't think that was necessary.

[Razors Edge ★]

1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

I didn't think that was necessary.

Did the locals ever call it "Peking"?  Or would you say it has essentially been Beijing for centuries? I don't get the vibe that Peking was ever the name.

Wiki has a neat article on it.

[donkpow]

Drat. I thought this thread would be about ducks. 

[maddmaxx ★]

53 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Did the locals ever call it "Peking"?  Or would you say it has essentially been Beijing for centuries? I don't get the vibe that Peking was ever the name.

Wiki has a neat article on it.

It was Peking when Japan was in charge.  We did this a week or so ago.  It's good to have no memory because you can be re entertained by old news.

[Square Wheels]

The parody meter reads........................   6.18

[Razors Edge ★]

On 6/18/2019 at 5:10 PM, maddmaxx said:

It was Peking when Japan was in charge.  We did this a week or so ago.  It's good to have no memory because you can be re entertained by old news.

So, was the story different back then?  A week is a long time in forum life, so maybe the real info has come forth and been revealed since then!

I don't think the story is quite that simple. I think we (English speakers) and others (Spanish, French, etc) tend to make a foreign name fit our way of speaking/writing, so whatever the Chinese characters for Beijing are will have been the "name" and Peking (like Beijing) was just a slightly different way of writing and trying to pronounce their characters/words for either "Northern Capital" or "Northern Peace" (when not the capital).  

So, long story short, depending upon whether Beijing was a CAPITAL city 北京 or just a major city 北平 would determine how the locals spoke of it.  How the West or even the bureaucracy within China wrote of it using our alphabet would be where the Peking/Beijing differentiation comes in.  If you hear the name spoken in Chinese and have to come up with a spelling (romanization) of it for Westerners, at one point "Peking" seemed to fit that bill, but now "Beijing" fits.

The link to the Peiping/Beiping name is a useful one for you to look at as it shows the name for the city "when Japan was in charge.":

Beiping or Peiping (Chinese: 北平; pinyin: Běipíng; Wade–Giles: Pei-p‘ing; literally: 'Northern Peace'), is a former name of Beijing, which means "Northern Capital". The city was called Beiping from 1368 to 1403 and from 1928 to 1949, when the Chinese capital was at Nanjing. In 1403 and again in 1949, the city's name was changed from Beiping to Beijing. From 1937 to 1945, the city under Japanese occupation served as the capital of a puppet regime and was renamed Beijing but most Chinese histories use the name Beiping for the city during that time period

-----------------------

Beijing: 北京 vs Beiping: 北平 shows the way the NAME has changed (depending upon the capital or not) but the Western romanization would still be using those two words.  It's a pretty interesting topic if you're willing to spend a few minutes digging deeper. 

[donkpow]

I like 'Peeping'. Let's call it that

[Razors Edge ★]

2 minutes ago, donkpow said:

I like 'Peeping'. Let's call it that

That was @jsharr's preference too, but he was too lazy to push it beyond the introduction step.

[maddmaxx ★]

3 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

So, was the story different back then?  A week is a long time in forum life, so maybe the real info has come forth and been revealed since then!

I don't think the story is quite that simple. I think we (English speakers) and others (Spanish, French, etc) tend to make a foreign name fit our way of speaking/writing, so whatever the Chinese characters for Beijing are will have been the "name" and Peking (like Beijing) was just a slightly different way of writing and trying to pronounce their characters/words for either "Northern Capital" or "Northern Peace" (when not the capital).  

So, long story short, depending upon whether Beijing was a CAPITAL city 北京 or just a major city 北平 would determine how the locals spoke of it.  How the West or even the bureaucracy within China wrote of it using our alphabet would be where the Peking/Beijing differentiation comes in.  If you hear the name spoken in Chinese and have to come up with a spelling (romanization) of it for Westerners, at one point "Peking" seemed to fit that bill, but now "Beijing" fits.

The link to the Peiping/Beiping name is a useful one for you to look at as it shows the name for the city "when Japan was in charge.":

Beiping or Peiping (Chinese: 北平; pinyin: Běipíng; Wade–Giles: Pei-p‘ing; literally: 'Northern Peace'), is a former name of Beijing, which means "Northern Capital". The city was called Beiping from 1368 to 1403 and from 1928 to 1949, when the Chinese capital was at Nanjing. In 1403 and again in 1949, the city's name was changed from Beiping to Beijing. From 1937 to 1945, the city under Japanese occupation served as the capital of a puppet regime and was renamed Beijing but most Chinese histories use the name Beiping for the city during that time period

-----------------------

Beijing: 北京 vs Beiping: 北平 shows the way the NAME has changed (depending upon the capital or not) but the Western romanization would still be using those two words.  It's a pretty interesting topic if you're willing to spend a few minutes digging deeper. 

Tomato vs tomato

[Razors Edge ★]

4 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

Tomato vs tomato

Right vs wrong? But you see that now, so it's fine.

[maddmaxx ★]

13 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

Right vs wrong? But you see that now, so it's fine.

Romanization of the original chinese vs the japanese vs the poeples republic.

Same city same chinese characters.

Tomato vs tomato.

[Razors Edge ★]

1 minute ago, maddmaxx said:

Romanization of the original chinese vs the japanese vs the poeples republic.

Same city same chinese characters.

Tomato vs tomato.

I think your quote was "I believe it was Beijing until the Japanese invaded and changed the name to Peking.  After the war was over the Chinese changed it back to their choice.", but the point is that Beijing = Peking depending on how you romanize it, while Beiping vs Beijing (Peiping vs Peking) are actual differences in a name (Northern Peace vs Northern Capital).  There can be debate on whether "Peking" or "Beijing" is the better way to put it (北京) into words Westerners can handle, but it remains a mystery to me of what the locals called it all these years (while it was the capital).  Did their pronunciation actually sound closer to Peking at some point than Beijing? Or has it always sounded like this?

So, the relevant part of your mention of Japanese rule would be a distinction between Beiping vs Beijing NOT Peking vs Beijing.  Make sense?

[maddmaxx ★]

4 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

I think your quote was "I believe it was Beijing until the Japanese invaded and changed the name to Peking.  After the war was over the Chinese changed it back to their choice.", but the point is that Beijing = Peking depending on how you romanize it, while Beiping vs Beijing (Peiping vs Peking) are actual differences in a name (Northern Peace vs Northern Capital).  There can be debate on whether "Peking" or "Beijing" is the better way to put it (北京) into words Westerners can handle, but it remains a mystery to me of what the locals called it all these years (while it was the capital).  Did their pronunciation actually sound closer to Peking at some point than Beijing? Or has it always sounded like this?

So, the relevant part of your mention of Japanese rule would be a distinction between Beiping vs Beijing NOT Peking vs Beijing.  Make sense?

Yes, the romanization of the Japanese is Peking.  Beping is the romanization of the original Chinese and then the Peoples Republic changed the way Chinese is pronounced so the romanization of the current Chinese is Bejing.  Same two Chinese characters three different romanizations of the language of the guys what be in charge.

[Razors Edge ★]

48 minutes ago, maddmaxx said:

Yes, the romanization of the Japanese is Peking.  Beping is the romanization of the original Chinese and then the Peoples Republic changed the way Chinese is pronounced so the romanization of the current Chinese is Bejing.  Same two Chinese characters three different romanizations of the language of the guys what be in charge.

So we're on the same page now! It's all pronunciation/spelling related but not name change related. The name stayed the same (when it was a capital), but the way we Westerners and the folks appealing to Westerners spelled it just evolved.

[maddmaxx ★]

6 minutes ago, Razors Edge said:

So we're on the same page now! It's all pronunciation/spelling related but not name change related. The name stayed the same (when it was a capital), but the way we Westerners and the folks appealing to Westerners spelled it just evolved.

Personally I go with what the people who control Beijing call it.  Why should the people's republic get away with calling Taiwan Chinese Taipei during the olympics.

 

[MickinMD ★]

I've previously posted screen these screen-caps from my video documentary of my 2001 China tour, taken with a relatively lo-res VHS camcorder, as our bus from the airport entered Beijing.  Even after having been in China for over a week at that point, it was amazing to see all the bicycles in Beijing. Get a load of the flatbed tricycles in the first two pictures: