Wade-Giles Chinese Romanization – S2-E20

Why is "Kaohsiung" spelled so strangely? Shouldn't it be closer to "Gao-Shung"? (Or we could just use Hanyu Pinyin, "Gāoxióng"). Well, many names in Taiwan are spelled with the Latin alphabet, using a romanization system popularized by Mr. Herbert Giles, a British consul who spent 25 years in the treaty ports of China and Taiwan. The -- for some -- infamous Wade-Giles system renders "Pingdong" as "P’ing-tung," and "Taidong" as "T’ai-tung." It’s big on hyphens and apostrophes, too – T’ai-pei, T’ai-wan, Nan-t’ou – but this punctuation is seldom used correctly.

Mr. Giles played an important role as an early Sinologist and Chinese translator, while the second Mrs. Giles chronicled treaty port life in a series called China Coast Tales, which included two stories set in Danshui, where the couple lived in the 1880s. Mr. and Mrs. Giles were not only prolific writers, but both also had some strong opinions and were not shy in expressing them, which makes for a fun episode.