Well, that's what I thought, too. But a couple of posts back, Alan explained that "Peking" is in fact the Cantonese name for Beijing. IIRC, most or many Chinese immigrants to North America (and probably Britain as well) were Cantonese speaking, so perhaps that's why we in the West adopted "Peking" as the name for the capital of China.
At least that's the case for Canada; until recently the majority of Chinese-Canadians were Cantonese speaking. I believe that they may still be in the majority, but of late more and more Mandarin speaking Chinese have been arriving.
cheers, frank
"The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true." -J. Robert Oppenheimer
From: "J. C. O'Connell" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: RE: OT - Chinese Ducks-was: Happy Holidays to All Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 10:04:10 -0500
I see. So Peking is just the western name similar to the way we call "Germany" "Germany" when the natives call it Deutschland. (spelling?) JCO
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