Postcards of China
In 1949, when the People's Republic of China was established, a new method called pinyin for the transliteration of names, including place names, with the Latin alphabet was introduced. This gave rise to the seeming change in the English spelling of many places, but no names were actually changed in China. Therefore in English Peking had to give way to Beijing, Sian to Xi'an. The change became gradually generalized when China began to use its pinyin transliteration in airports and other public systems.
Some background on China»
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