So begins one of the most beautiful and well-known Tang dynasty poems, Farewell, composed by Wang Wei (AD699-761). To spell out this passage using Hanyu pinyin, mainland China’s official system of ...

Have you ever felt lost when trying to pronounce or understand a Chinese name? Well, you're not alone. It's a challenge many of us face, and it stems from the way Chinese names are romanized using ...

FEW people live to 111. Fewer still leave as big a mark on linguistic lives as Zhou Youguang, who died on January 14th. Mr Zhou was the chief architect of pinyin, the system that the Chinese use to ...

Have you ever wondered why it’s Peking Duck from the city of Beijing? Turns out, it’s all due to the work of a Chinese linguist named Zhou Youguang, who is being celebrated on Google’s homepage on ...

Why is Christian Science in our name? Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and we’ve always been transparent about that. The church publishes the ...

The phonetic alphabet developed by Zhou Youguang, pinyin, turns 50 this month, having helped up to a billion Chinese citizens to learn to read, write and in many cases speak the national language. The ...

Zhou Youguang, the inventor of a system to convert Chinese characters into words with the Roman alphabet, died Saturday at the age of 111. Since his system was introduced nearly six decades ago, few ...