220px-Peking_Man

The Discovery Channel has a pseudo-science show called “Mythbusters,” in which the two hosts, through a series of experiments, sometimes prove or disprove that something often believed by a large number of people is not true. This can include recreating movie stunts for realism, or whether sharks are repelled by magnets or not, things of that nature. As such, China seems to have many myths surrounding it, and so doing some mythbusting, or in some cases myth-proving, may be a good idea.

The name of Beijing never changed over the years, from Peking, as some foreigners think. What changed is the way the city’s name was romanized. Peking comes from the old Wade-Giles system, and actually indicated the same pronunciation. However, because the system was never very clear except to scholars, it led to widespread confusion that continues today. Beijing comes from China’s own “hanyu pinyin” romanization system, which, at least for the name of the capital, is much clearer. There was a period, however, when Beijing was known as “Beiping,” or “northern peace,” from 1911, when the Qing Dynasty was overthrown, and 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was established. During those 38 years, Nanjing (“southern capital”) served as the nation’s capital, as it has previously during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). Although no longer China’s seat of government, Nanjing is still known as Nanjing.

The pronunciation of any “j” in a romanized Chinese name is said like the j in “jump.” It is not a French “j,” like “beaujolais.”

You can see the Great Wall from space — but it depends entirely upon how far away from Earth you are. Many things can be seen from space if you aren’t too far away. It cannot be seen from the Moon — and neither can any other man-made object.

The famous Peking Man fossils were found near Peking, or Beijing, near the town of Zhoukoudian, in 1920. They were important because they established a humanoid link between primate species like homo sapiens (modern human beings) and homo erectus, and were dated to be about 500,000 years old.

Although it’s possible to go to to Zhoukoudian and see humanoid fossils from that period, the original fossils that made the site famous and gave them its name have been missing for almost 70 years. The fossils disappeared after the Japanese invasion of northern China, and have never emerged since.

One of the more interesting tales relating to the Peking Man fossils is that they were being transported on a Japanese ship towards the end of the Second World War. The Awa Maru was sailing from Singapore back to the Japanese home islands when it was torpedoed by an American submarine, the USS Queenfish. Over 2000 people died in the sinking, with a Japanese cook left as the sole survivor, rescued by the Queenfish. In 1977, China began a three-year salvage on the shipwreck, believing that the Peking Man fossils were aboard. Although they excavated and repatriated 380 sets of remains of passengers that had been aboard, the Peking Man fossils were not found, and remain missing today.