Beijing
Beijing (Chinese: 北京; pinyin: Běijīng; Wade-Giles: Peiching or Pei-ching; IPA: [peɪ˨˩ tɕɪŋ˥˥]; Chinese Postal Map Romanization: Peking; literally "Northern capital";, a metropolis in northern China, is the capital of the People's Republic of China (PRC). It was formerly known in English as Peking (English pronunciation). Beijing is also one of the four municipalities of the PRC, which are equivalent to provinces in China's administrative structure. Beijing Municipality borders Hebei Province to the north, west, south, and for a small section in the east, and Tianjin Municipality to the southeast. Beijing is China's second largest city, after Shanghai. It is a major transportation hub, with dozens of railways, roads and motorways passing through the city. It is also the focal point of many international flights to China. Beijing is recognised as the political, educational, and cultural centre of the People's Republic of China, while Shanghai and Hong Kong predominate in economic fields.
Beijing or Peking (北京) literally means "northern capital", in line with the common East Asian tradition whereby capital cities are explicitly named as such. Other cities similarly named include Nanjing (南京), China, meaning "southern capital"; Tokyo (东京), Japan, and Đông Kinh (东京, known to Europeans as Tonkin) meaning "eastern capital"; as well as Xi'an (西安), which is considered the "western capital". Kyoto (京都), Japan, and Gyeongseong (京城; now Seoul), Korea, both mean simply "capital". Peking is the name of the city according to Chinese Postal Map Romanization, and the traditional customary name for Beijing in English.
The term Peking originated with French missionaries four hundred years ago and corresponds to an older pronunciation predating a subsequent sound change in Mandarin from [kʲ] to [tɕ]. ([tɕ] is represented in pinyin as j, as in Beijing), and is still used in some languages (as in Serbian, Dutch, German, Hungarian, Polish and Spanish).
The city has been renamed several times. During the Jin Dynasty, the city was known as Zhongdu (中都) , and then later under the Mongol Yuan Dynasty as Dadu (大都) in Chinese, and Khanbaliq in Mongolian (recorded as Cambuluc by Marco Polo). After the reconquest of the city by the Ming it was known as Shuntian (順天), and later as Peiping (北平 Pinyin: Beiping; Wade-Giles: Pei-p'ing), literally "Northern Peace", a name it received again from 1928 and 1949. On both occasions, the name changed — with the removal of the element meaning "capital" (jing or king, 京) — to reflect the fact the national capital had changed to Nanjing, the first time under the Hongwu Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and the second time with the Kuomintang (KMT) government of the Republic of China, so that Peking was no longer the capital of China.
The Communist Party of China reverted the name to Beijing (Peking) in 1949 again in part to emphasize that Beijing had returned to its role as China's capital. The government of the Republic of China on Taiwan has never formally recognized the name change, and during the 1950s and 1960s it was common in Taiwan for Beijing to be called Beiping to imply the illegitimacy of the PRC. Today though, almost all of Taiwan, including the ROC government, uses Beijing, although some maps of China from Taiwan still use the old name along with pre-1949 political boundaries.
Yanjing (燕京; Pinyin: Yānjīng; Wade-Giles: Yen-ching) is and has been another popular informal name for Beijing, a reference to the ancient State of Yan that existed here during the Zhou Dynasty. This name is reflected in the locally-brewed Yanjing Beer as well as Yenching University, an institution of higher learning that was merged into Peking University.