Linfen
Linfen is a prefecture-level city in the southwest of Shanxi province, People's Republic of China, bordering Shaanxi province to the west. It is situated along the banks of the Fen River, it has an area of 20,275 square kilometres and according to the 2010 Census, a population of 4,316,612 inhabitants of which 944,050 live in the built-up area made up of Yaodu urban district. The GDP of Linfen ranked second in Shanxi Province, it was known as Pingyang during the Autumn period. In 2006, the American Blacksmith Institute listed Linfen as one of the ten most polluted cities in the world. Prior to 1978, Linfen was famous for its spring water and rich agriculture and therefore nicknamed "The Modern Fruit and Flower Town". Since it has been developing into a main industrial center for coal mining, which has damaged the city's environment, air quality, farming and its previous status as a green village. Linfen is named for the Fen River, its former names include Jin and Pingyang. Chinese archeologists have claimed that Yao's capital was located in Linfen, a confirmation of local legend responsible for the name of the city's Yaodu District.
So, Linfen city is the earliest capital of China. The area was the center of the duchy of Jin, named for the Jin River; the duchy collapsed in the 4th century BC but gave its name to a Chinese princely title used as the dynastic name of the Sima clan. Jin Prefecture was centered on the town, which took its name as Jinzhou, it was renamed Pingyang Commandery, adapted as the name for its chief town. The Xiongnu Chanyu Liu Cong made Pingyang his residence in the fourth century. "He kept court at Pingyang in and ruled over central and southern, northern and northern." In the 10th century, the city's walls were considered "fortified beyond approach". In the 1980s, Linfen was nicknamed "The Modern Fruit and Flower Town". Linfen is located in the southwestern part of Shanxi, on the lower reaches of the Fen River, bounded by Changzhi and Jincheng to the east, the Yellow River to the west, Jinzhong and Lüliang to the north, Yuncheng to the south; the prefecture ranges in latitude from 35° 23′ N to 36° 37′ N, spanning 170 kilometres, in longitude from 110° 22′ E to 112° 34′ E, spanning 200 km.
In all, the city's administrative area, at 20,275 square kilometres, covers 13% of the province's area. Within its borders Linfen City has a variety of topographical features, it ischaracterised as having a "U" shape, with its mountains, covering 29.2% of the prefectural area, on all four cardinal directions, a basin, the Linfen Basin, covering 19.4%, in the middle, intervening hills, covering 51.4%, in between. In the east, from north to south, are Mount Huo and the Zhongtiao Mountains; the highest point in the prefecture is the main peak of Mount Huo, at 2,347 metres, the lowest is in Xiangning County, at 385 metres. Important rivers in the area include the Yellow, Xinshui, Hui, E, Qingshui Rivers; the whole prefecture-level city features a great variety of terrain. The city itself sits in a basin. Linfen has a continental, monsoon-influenced semi-arid climate, with moderately cold, but dry winters, hot, somewhat humid summers; the monthly 24-hour average temperature ranges from −2.7 °C in January to 26.1 °C in July, the annual mean is 12.6 °C.
The annual precipitation stands at 470 millimetres, with close to 70% of this total falling from June to September. The frost-free period lasts on average 190 days per year. Extreme temperatures have ranged from −22.5 °C to 40.5 °C. China's rapid industrialization and urbanization beginning in the 1990s led to increased energy demand causing a dramatic increase in the price of coal; this led to a rapid expansion of loosely regulated private mines. Mining, cooking and other heavy industries which developed around the city have led to catastrophic environmental damage. In 2006, the Blacksmith Institute included Linfen in its annual "10 worst" report, calling the city the most polluted city in China, it has been listed as one of the world's ten dirtiest cities by the Popular Science website. The city has ranked at the bottom of the World Bank's air quality rankings. From its low point, in 2004, with only fifteen days out of the year with an acceptable level of air pollution, the environmental situation has improved.
After a series of negative reports on the extreme level of pollution in the city, efforts were made to clean up Linfen. Substandard mines were closed. Coal trucks were kept from resulting in much less coal dust; the city has switched much of its heating source from coal to gas. 197 large coal-fired boilers and more than 600 smaller boilers were decommissioned. As of 2007, 85% of population used natural gas rather than coal for their heating; the State Environmental Protection Agency has forced many of the less-efficient smaller factories to close and enforced stricter standards for larger factories including mandating the installation of sulfur scrubbers. Since 2006, the government has taken a series of measures to modify industrial structure and economic development mode. Relevant policies was issued such as emission thresholds of industrial pollution. Over the last few years the Ministry of Environmental Protection has been monitoring Linfen's environme
Jin (Chinese state)
Jin known as Tang, was a major state during the middle part of the Zhou dynasty, based near the centre of what was China, on the lands attributed to the legendary Xia dynasty: the southern part of modern Shanxi. Although it grew in power during the Spring and Autumn period, its aristocratic structure saw it break apart when the duke lost power to his nobles. In 453 BC, Jin was split into three successor states: Han and Wei; the Partition of Jin marks the end of the Spring and Autumn Period and the beginning of the Warring States period. Jin was located in the lower Fen River drainage basin on the Shanxi plateau. To the north were the Xirong and Beidi peoples. To the west were the Lüliang Mountains and the Loess Plateau of northern Shaanxi. To the southwest the Fen River turns west to join the south-flowing part of the Yellow River which soon leads to the Guanzhong, an area of the Wei River Valley, the heartland of the Western Zhou and of the Qin. To the south are the Zhongtiao Mountains and the east-west valley of the Yellow River, the main route to the Wei Valley to the west.
To the east were the Taihang Mountains and the North China Plain. This location gave ambitious Jin dukes the opportunity to move north to conquer and absorb the Xirong tribes, move southwest and fight Qin, move southeast to absorb the many smaller Zhou states. Important to the region were the large states of Chu to the south in the Yangtze and Huai River regions and Qi to the east in Shandong. Jin had multiple capitals; the first capital of Jin was Tang. The capital was moved to È Jiàng Xintian. From 746 to 677, Quwo was the capital of a fragment of Jin; when the Zhou Dynasty was founded, the conquered lands were given to Zhou relatives and ministers as hereditary fiefs. King Cheng of Zhou, the second Zhou king, gave the land called Tang, west of modern Yicheng County in Shanxi, to his younger brother, Tang Shuyu with the rank of a marquis. Tang Shuyu's son and successor, Marquis Xie of Jin, changed the name of Tang to Jin. There is little information about Jin for this period beyond a list of rulers.
In 771 BC the Quanrong nomads killed the king. Marquis Wen of Jin, the eleventh marquis of Jin, supported King Ping of Zhou by killing his rival, King Xie of Zhou, an act that King Ping rewarded him for; when Marquis Zhao of Jin acceded to the throne, he gave the land of Quwo to his uncle Chengshi who became Huan Shu of Quwo. In 739 BC, an official invited Huan Shu to take the throne. Huan Shu entered Jin but retreated to Quwo. All three Quwo rulers, Huan Shu, Zhuang Bo and Duke Wu made attempts to take over Jin. In 678 BC, Duke Wu of Quwo killed Marquis Min of Jin. One year after receiving gifts from Duke Wu, King Xi of Zhou made Duke Wu the legal ruler of Jin, who became known as Duke Wu of Jin. With the establishment of the Quwo line, Jin became the most powerful state for three generations and remained powerful for a century or more after that. Duke Wu died soon after gaining control of Jin, he was followed by Duke Xian of Jin. Xian broke with Zhou feudalism by killing or exiling his cousins and ruling with appointees of various social backgrounds.
He annexed 16 or 17 small states in Shanxi, dominated 38 others, absorbed a number of Rong tribes. Some of the states conquered were Geng, old Wei, Yu and Western Guo, his death led to a succession struggle. In 646 BC, Duke Hui was restored as a vassal. Another son of Duke Xian was Duke Wen of Jin, he came to the throne in 636 escorted by the troops of Duke Mu of Qin. Duke Wen established himself as an independent ruler by driving the Di barbarians west of the Yellow River. In 635 BC he supported King Xiang of Zhou against a rival and was rewarded with lands near the royal capital. In 633 BC, he confronted the rising power of the southern state of Chu, besieging Song. Instead of directly assisting Song, he attacked two vassals of Chu and Wei; the following year, he formed a military alliance with Qin, Qi and Song that defeated Chu at the Battle of Chengpu the largest battle in the Spring and Autumn period. Shortly after the battle, he held an interstate conference at Jitu with King Xiang of Zhou and the rulers of six other states.
He received from the King the title of "ba" or hegemon. At some point there was a war with Qin. Duke Wen erected monuments to the fallen on both sides; the Chinese proverb "The Friendship of Qin and Jin", meaning an unbreakable bond, dates from this period. Over the next century, a four-way balance of power developed between Qin, Chu and Qi, with a number of smaller states between Jin and Qi. In 627 BC, Jin defeated Qin. Jin was driven back the following year. In 598 BC, Chu defeated Jin at the Battle of Mi. In 589 BC, Jin defeated Qi, which had invaded Wei. About this time Jin began to support the southeastern state of Wu as a means of weakening Chu. Duke Li of Jin allied with Qin and Qi to make an east-west front against the threat of Chu from the south. In 579 BC, a minister of the state of Song arranged a four-power conference in which the states agreed to limit their military strength. Four years fighting broke out again.
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese known as Modern Standard Mandarin, Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin Chinese, or Mandarin, is a standard variety of Chinese, the sole official language of China, the de facto official language of Taiwan and one of the four official languages of Singapore. Its pronunciation is based on the Beijing dialect, its vocabulary on the Mandarin dialects, its grammar is based on written vernacular Chinese. Like other varieties of Chinese, Standard Chinese is a tonal language with topic-prominent organization and subject–verb–object word order, it has more initial consonants but final consonants and tones than southern varieties. Standard Chinese is an analytic language, though with many compound words. There are two standardised forms of the language, namely Putonghua in Mainland China and Guoyu in Taiwan. Aside from a number of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, Putonghua is written using simplified Chinese characters, Guoyu is written using traditional Chinese characters.
Many characters are identical between the two systems. In Chinese, the standard variety is known as: 普通话 in the People's Republic of China, as well as Hong Kong and Macau. Standard Chinese is commonly referred to by generic names for "Chinese", notably 中文. In total, there have been known over 20 various names for the language; the term Guoyu had been used by non-Han rulers of China to refer to their languages, but in 1909 the Qing education ministry applied it to Mandarin, a lingua franca based on northern Chinese varieties, proclaiming it as the new "national language". The name Putonghua has a long, albeit unofficial, history, it was used as early as 1906 in writings by Zhu Wenxiong to differentiate a modern, standard Chinese from classical Chinese and other varieties of Chinese. For some linguists of the early 20th century, the Putonghua, or "common tongue/speech", was conceptually different from the Guoyu, or "national language"; the former was a national prestige variety. Based on common understandings of the time, the two were, in fact, different.
Guoyu was understood as formal vernacular Chinese, close to classical Chinese. By contrast, Putonghua was called "the common speech of the modern man", the spoken language adopted as a national lingua franca by conventional usage; the use of the term Putonghua by left-leaning intellectuals such as Qu Qiubai and Lu Xun influenced the People's Republic of China government to adopt that term to describe Mandarin in 1956. Prior to this, the government used both terms interchangeably. In Taiwan, Guoyu continues to be the official term for Standard Chinese; the term Guoyu however, is less used in the PRC, because declaring a Beijing dialect-based standard to be the national language would be deemed unfair to speakers of other varieties and to the ethnic minorities. The term Putonghua, on the contrary, implies nothing more than the notion of a lingua franca. During the government of a pro-Taiwan independence coalition, Taiwan officials promoted a different reading of Guoyu as all of the "national languages", meaning Hokkien and Formosan as well as Standard Chinese.
Huayu, or "language of the Chinese nation" simply meant "Chinese language", was used in overseas communities to contrast Chinese with foreign languages. Over time, the desire to standardise the variety of Chinese spoken in these communities led to the adoption of the name "Huayu" to refer to Mandarin; this name avoids choosing a side between the alternative names of Putonghua and Guoyu, which came to have political significance after their usages diverged along political lines between the PRC and the ROC. It incorporates the notion that Mandarin is not the national or common language of the areas in which overseas Chinese live. Hanyu, or "language of the Han people", is another umbrella term used for Chinese. However, it has confusingly two different meanings: Standard Chinese; this term, as well as Hànzú, is a modern concept. A related concept is Hànzì; the term "Mandarin" is a translation of Guānhuà, which referred to the lingua franca of the late Chinese empire. The Chinese term is obsolete as a name for the standard language, but is used by linguists to refer to the major group of Mandarin dialects spoken natively across most of northern and southwestern China.
In English, "Mandarin" may refer to the standard language, the dialect group as a whole, or to historic forms such as the late Imperial lingua franca. The name "Modern Standard Mandarin" is sometimes used by linguists who wish to distinguish the current state of the shared language from other northern and historic dialects; the Chinese have different languages in different provinces, to such an extent
Ningwu County
Ningwu County is a county under the administration of Xinzhou in Shanxi province, China. Present-day Ningwu County includes the site of the former seat of Loufan County, now part of Taiyuan Prefecture. Www.xzqh.org Xiong, Victor Cunrui, Historical Dictionary of Medieval China, Historical Dictionaries of Ancient Civilizations and Historical Eras, No. 19, Lanham: Scarecrow Press
Yellow River
The Yellow River or Huang He is the second longest river in China, after the Yangtze River, the sixth longest river system in the world at the estimated length of 5,464 km. Originating in the Bayan Har Mountains in Qinghai province of Western China, it flows through nine provinces, it empties into the Bohai Sea near the city of Dongying in Shandong province; the Yellow River basin has an east–west extent of about 1,900 kilometers and a north–south extent of about 1,100 km. Its total drainage area is about 752,546 square kilometers, its basin was the birthplace of ancient Chinese civilization, it was the most prosperous region in early Chinese history. There are frequent devastating floods and course changes produced by the continual elevation of the river bed, sometimes above the level of its surrounding farm fields. Early Chinese literature including the Yu Gong or Tribute of Yu dating to the Warring States period refers to the Yellow River as 河, a character that has come to mean "river" in modern usage.
The first appearance of the name 黃河 is in the Book of Han written during the Eastern Han dynasty about the Western Han dynasty. The adjective "yellow" describes the perennial color of the muddy water in the lower course of the river, which arises from soil being carried downstream. One of its older Mongolian names was the "Black River", because the river runs clear before it enters the Loess Plateau, but the current name of the river among Inner Mongolians is Ȟatan Gol. In Mongolia itself, it is called the Šar Mörön. In Qinghai, the river's Tibetan name is "River of the Peacock" The Yellow River is one of several rivers that are essential for China's existence. At the same time, however, it has been responsible for several deadly floods, including the only natural disasters in recorded history to have killed more than a million people; the deadliest was a Yuan dynasty 1332 -- 33 flood. Close behind during the Qing dynasty is the 1887 flood, which killed anywhere from 900,000 to 2 million people, a Republic of China era 1931 flood that killed 1–4 million people.
The cause of the floods is the large amount of fine-grained loess carried by the river from the Loess Plateau, continuously deposited along the bottom of its channel. The sedimentation causes natural dams to accumulate; these subaqueous dams were unpredictable and undetectable. The enormous amount of water has to find a new way to the sea, forcing it to take the path of least resistance; when this happens, it bursts out across the flat North China Plain, sometimes taking a new channel and inundating any farmland, cities or towns in its path. The traditional Chinese response of building higher and higher levees along the banks sometimes contributed to the severity of the floods: When flood water did break through the levees, it could no longer drain back into the river bed as it would after a normal flood as the river bed was sometimes now higher than the surrounding countryside; these changes could cause the river's mouth to shift as much as 480 km, sometimes reaching the ocean to the north of Shandong Peninsula and sometimes to the south.
Another historical source of devastating floods is the collapse of upstream ice dams in Inner Mongolia with an accompanying sudden release of vast quantities of impounded water. There have been 11 such major floods in the past century, each causing tremendous loss of life and property. Nowadays, explosives dropped from aircraft are used to break the ice dams before they become dangerous. Before modern dams came to China, the Yellow River used to be prone to flooding. In the 2,540 years from 595 BC to 1946 AD, the Yellow River has been reckoned to have flooded 1,593 times, shifting its course 26 times noticeably and nine times severely; these floods include some of the deadliest natural disasters recorded. Before modern disaster management, when floods occurred, some of the population might die from drowning but many more would suffer from the ensuing famine and spread of diseases. In Chinese mythology, the giant Kua Fu drained the Yellow River and the Wei River to quench his burning thirst as he pursued the Sun.
Historical documents from the Spring and Autumn period and Qin dynasty indicate that the Yellow River at that time flowed north of its present course. These accounts show that after the river passed Luoyang, it flowed along the border between Shanxi and Henan Provinces continued along the border between Hebei and Shandong before emptying into Bohai Bay near present-day Tianjin. Another outlet followed the present course; the river left these paths in 602 BC and shifted south of the Shandong Peninsula. Sabotage of dikes and reservoirs and deliberate flooding of rival states became a standard military tactic during the Warring States period; as the Yellow River valley was the major entryway to the Guanzhong area and the state of Qin from the North China Plain, Qin fortified the Hangu Pass. Major flooding in AD 11 is credited with the downfall of the short-lived Xin dynasty, another flood in AD 70 returned the river north of Shandong on its present course. From around the beginning of the 3rd century, the importance of the Hangu Pass was reduced, with the major fortifications a
Shanxi
Shanxi is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the North China region. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋", after the state of Jin that existed here during the Spring and Autumn period; the name Shanxi means "West of the Mountains", a reference to the province's location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west, Inner Mongolia to the north and is made up of a plateau bounded by mountain ranges; the capital of the province is Taiyuan. During xia dynasty （ existed from 2070 bc-1600 bc), or 2030 bc--1600 bc, the capital city moved one capital situate in nowadays Yuncheng and nowadays Linfen In the Spring and Autumn period, the state of Jin was located in what is now Shanxi Province, it underwent a three-way split into the states of Han and Wei in 403 BC, the traditional date taken as the start of the Warring States period. By 221 BC, all of these states had fallen to the state of Qin; the Han Dynasty ruled Shanxi as the province of Bingzhou.
During the invasion of northern nomads in the Sixteen Kingdoms period, several regimes including the Later Zhao, Former Yan, Former Qin, Later Yan continuously controlled Shanxi. They were followed by Northern Wei, a Xianbei kingdom, which had one of its earlier capitals at present-day Datong in northern Shanxi, which went on to rule nearly all of northern China; the Tang Dynasty originated in Taiyuan. During the Tang Dynasty and after, present day Shanxi was called Hédōng, or "east of the river". Empress Wu Zetian, China's only female ruler, was born in Shanxi in 624. During the first part of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, Shanxi supplied rulers of three of the Five Dynasties, as well as being the only one of the Ten Kingdoms located in northern China. Shanxi was home to the jiedushi of Hedong, Li Cunxu, who overthrew the first of the Five Dynasties, Later Liang to establish the second, Later Tang. Another jiedushi of Hedong, Shi Jingtang, overthrew Later Tang to establish the third of the Five Dynasties, Later Jin, yet another jiedushi of Hedong, Liu Zhiyuan, established the fourth of the Five Dynasties after the Khitans destroyed Later Jin, the third.
When the fifth of the Five Dynasties emerged, the jiedushi of Hedong at the time, Liu Chong and established an independent state called Northern Han, one of the Ten Kingdoms, in what is now northern and central Shanxi. Shi Jingtang, founder of the Later Jin, the third of the Five Dynasties, ceded a piece of northern China to the Khitans in return for military assistance; this territory, called The Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun, included a part of northern Shanxi. The ceded territory became a major problem for China's defense against the Khitans for the next 100 years, because it lay south of the Great Wall; the Zhou, the last dynasty of the Five Dynasties period was founded by Guo Wei, a Han Chinese, who served as the Assistant Military Commissioner at the court of the Later Han, ruled by Shatuo Turks. He founded his dynasty by launching a military coup against the Turkic Later Han Emperor, however his newly established dynasty was short lived and was conquered by the Song Dynasty in 960. In the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, the sixteen ceded prefectures continued to be an area of contention between Song China and the Liao Dynasty.
The Southern Song Dynasty abandoned all of North China, including Shanxi, to the Jurchen Jin dynasty in 1127 after the Jingkang Incident of the Jin-Song wars. The Mongol Yuan Dynasty did not establish Shanxi as a province. Shanxi only gained its present name and approximate borders during the Ming Dynasty which were of the same landarea and borders as the previous Hedong Commandery that existed during the Tang Dynasty. During the Qing Dynasty, Shanxi extended north beyond the Great Wall to include parts of Inner Mongolia, including what is now the city of Hohhot, overlapped with the jurisdiction of the Eight Banners and the Guihua Tümed banner in that area. With the collapse of the Qing dynasty, Shanxi became part of the newly established Republic of China. During most of the Republic of China's period of rule over mainland China, the warlord Yan Xishan controlled Shanxi. Yan Xishan devoted himself to modernizing Shanxi and developing its resources during his reign over the province. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japan occupied much of the province after winning the Battle of Taiyuan.
Shanxi was a major battlefield between the Japanese and the Chinese communist guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army during the war. The soldiers of Shanxi province under Yan Xishan viciously fought against the invading Japanese, which impressed the Japanese to say that nowhere in China did people fight so heroically and bravely. Right after the defeat of Japan, much of the Shanxi countryside became important bases for the communist People's Liberation Army in the ensuing Chinese Civil War. Yan had incorporated thousands of former Japanese soldiers into his own forces to fight against the communists, these soldiers became part of his failed defense of Taiyuan against the People's Liberation Army in early 1949. Shanxi was conquered by the communists, resulting in the warlord Yan Xishan's retreat to Taiwan Island. In September, Shanxi Provincial People's Government was established. For centuries, Shanxi
Pinyin
Hanyu Pinyin abbreviated to pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Chinese in mainland China and to some extent in Taiwan. It is used to teach Standard Mandarin Chinese, written using Chinese characters; the system includes four diacritics denoting tones. Pinyin without tone marks is used to spell Chinese names and words in languages written with the Latin alphabet, in certain computer input methods to enter Chinese characters; the pinyin system was developed in the 1950s by many linguists, including Zhou Youguang, based on earlier forms of romanizations of Chinese. It was published by revised several times; the International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as an international standard in 1982, was followed by the United Nations in 1986. The system was adopted as the official standard in Taiwan in 2009, where it is used for international events rather than for educational or computer-input purposes, but "some cities and organizations, notably in the south of Taiwan, did not accept this", so it remains one of several rival romanization systems in use.
The word Hànyǔ means'the spoken language of the Han people', while Pīnyīn means'spelled sounds'. In 1605, the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci published Xizi Qiji in Beijing; this was the first book to use the Roman alphabet to write the Chinese language. Twenty years another Jesuit in China, Nicolas Trigault, issued his Xi Ru Ermu Zi at Hangzhou. Neither book had much immediate impact on the way in which Chinese thought about their writing system, the romanizations they described were intended more for Westerners than for the Chinese. One of the earliest Chinese thinkers to relate Western alphabets to Chinese was late Ming to early Qing dynasty scholar-official, Fang Yizhi; the first late Qing reformer to propose that China adopt a system of spelling was Song Shu. A student of the great scholars Yu Yue and Zhang Taiyan, Song had been to Japan and observed the stunning effect of the kana syllabaries and Western learning there; this galvanized him into activity on a number of fronts, one of the most important being reform of the script.
While Song did not himself create a system for spelling Sinitic languages, his discussion proved fertile and led to a proliferation of schemes for phonetic scripts. The Wade–Giles system was produced by Thomas Wade in 1859, further improved by Herbert Giles in the Chinese–English Dictionary of 1892, it was popular and used in English-language publications outside China until 1979. In the early 1930s, Communist Party of China leaders trained in Moscow introduced a phonetic alphabet using Roman letters, developed in the Soviet Oriental Institute of Leningrad and was intended to improve literacy in the Russian Far East; this Sin Wenz or "New Writing" was much more linguistically sophisticated than earlier alphabets, but with the major exception that it did not indicate tones of Chinese. In 1940, several thousand members attended a Border Region Sin Wenz Society convention. Mao Zedong and Zhu De, head of the army, both contributed their calligraphy for the masthead of the Sin Wenz Society's new journal.
Outside the CCP, other prominent supporters included Sun Fo. Over thirty journals soon appeared written in Sin Wenz, plus large numbers of translations, some contemporary Chinese literature, a spectrum of textbooks. In 1940, the movement reached an apex when Mao's Border Region Government declared that the Sin Wenz had the same legal status as traditional characters in government and public documents. Many educators and political leaders looked forward to the day when they would be universally accepted and replace Chinese characters. Opposition arose, because the system was less well adapted to writing regional languages, therefore would require learning Mandarin. Sin Wenz fell into relative disuse during the following years. In 1943, the U. S. military engaged Yale University to develop a romanization of Mandarin Chinese for its pilots flying over China. The resulting system is close to pinyin, but does not use English letters in unfamiliar ways. Medial semivowels are written with y and w, apical vowels with r or z.
Accent marks are used to indicate tone. Pinyin was created by Chinese linguists, including Zhou Youguang, as part of a Chinese government project in the 1950s. Zhou is called "the father of pinyin," Zhou worked as a banker in New York when he decided to return to China to help rebuild the country after the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, he became an economics professor in Shanghai, in 1955, when China's Ministry of Education created a Committee for the Reform of the Chinese Written Language, Premier Zhou Enlai assigned Zhou Youguang the task of developing a new romanization system, despite the fact that he was not a professional linguist. Hanyu Pinyin was based on several existing systems: Gwoyeu Romatzyh of 1928, Latinxua Sin Wenz of 1931, the diacritic markings from zhuyin. "I'm not the father of pinyin," Zhou said years later. It's a lo
