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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.
Cover image via Quora - Robert Matthews (馬學進)
Below: Herbert Allen Giles (December 8, 1845 – February 13, 1935)
Via Wikimedia Commons
We could not find any images of Elise Giles.
Below: Sir Thomas Francis Wade (August 25, 1818 – July 31, 1895)
Via Wikimedia Commons
Below: An example of the even stranger Tongyong Pinyin system used in Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
(Photo by Eryk Michael Smith)
BOOK LINKS:
A Chinese-English Dictionary Hardcover – January 1, 1892
China Coast Tales (Classic Reprint) by Elise Williamina Edersheim Giles
Check our very first episode, the story of a very white man who showed up in London in 1703... and claimed to be from Formosa. Or try a foodie episode from Season 3. Or, for those who want some harder-core history, hear the tale of the Lockheed U-2 pilot Wang Hsi-chueh 王錫爵, who became was famous for defecting to the PRC by hijacking China Airlines Flight 334 on May 3, 1986.
