A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Why is China's capital called both Beijing and Peking?

Best Answers

Beijing is a very, very old city. It has a recorded history of over 3000 years but there us evidence that humanoids lived around here 700000 years ago (the Zhoukoudian area is where the 'Peking Man' bones were found). read more

Both Beijing and Peking actually refer to the same two characters in Chinese, that is, 北京. Their different spellings are a result of them being products of different romanisation systems. read more

The capital of China is called 北京. For Chinese, 北 means north and 京 means capital. Peking and Beijing are approximations to the sounds Chinese use to pronounce these two characters. Modern Chinese distinguish between P and B very differently to Latin or English, and there was no use of P and B in ancient China. read more

Actually Beijing was just the second capital then, and it was called Nanjing南京, which means “Sourthen Capital”. In 1153, the Jurchen Jin conquered northern China and made Beijing their capital called Zhongdu中都, which means “Central Capital” (or “Moderate Capital”). read more

Beijing was first called "蓟"(ji4). It became the capital of a southern state in China in 1045BC. And Beijing had been captial for about one thousand years since 938AC. Beijing has been captial of China since 1949. Beijing was first translated as "Peking", because the sound is like that. And "Beijing" was pinyin name for "北京". read more

Encyclopedia Research

Wikipedia: