Page:Sun Yat Sen And The Chinese Republic (IA in.ernet.dli.2015.80300).pdf/25

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

SUN YAT SEN AND THE CHINESE REPUBLIC

although in fact, from our Christian calculation, he was younger than this, for a Chinese child who is born even the day before the Chinese New Year is two years of age the day after.^[1]

I shall set to rest here the wide-spread and erroneous report of Sun Yat Sen's^[2] having been born in Honolulu.

"What about this report, Doctor, that you were born in Honolulu?" I asked him.

↑ Every Chinese child, at its birth, has a horoscope of eight characters: two for the year, two for the month, two for the day, and two for the hour of its birth; the Chinese hour being equivalent to two of ours, while their years bave an intercalary month every three years. Even the smallest village in China has its necromancers, who supply the proper characters for the new-born child—when they are not otherwise provided—as well as the characters for marriages and deaths. These characters are always entered in the clan records, the records being printed from en. graved blocks of wood, which, of themselves, supplement the records. Details such as this, however (and Chinese customs generally), shall not be allowed to encumber these pages except when absolutely essential.
↑ In this book the transliteration of Chinese names into English is made as simple as possible by omitting the hyphen and aspirate and giving each character the same lettering.
The Chinese write their names as we write ours in the telephone book; that is, the clan or family name (taken from the book of the hundred clans) comes first. After this generally come two descriptive names—descriptive to the clan name. The practice heretofore has been largely to write these two descriptive names with a hyphen, the second being uncapitalized. For example, John Willian Jones in Chinese, under the old style, would be Jones John-william. This, however, is merely a foreign affair and means nothing to the Chinese, and, since it likewise means nothing to us (except in a dictionary sense), in this book use of the hyphen is discontinued, and the names, both family and descriptive, are placed singly and spelled with a capital. In fact, the author would have preferred, if custom had allowed (as eventually it may), to run all the names together, Japanese fushion, as, Sunyatsen, instead of Sun Yat-sen, or, as we use it in this book, Sun Yat Sen. Sun's name is sometimes latinized to Sun-yacius.

4

[1] Every Chinese child, at its birth, has a horoscope of eight characters: two for the year, two for the month, two for the day, and two for the hour of its birth; the Chinese hour being equivalent to two of ours, while their years bave an intercalary month every three years. Even the smallest village in China has its necromancers, who supply the proper characters for the new-born child—when they are not otherwise provided—as well as the characters for marriages and deaths. These characters are always entered in the clan records, the records being printed from en. graved blocks of wood, which, of themselves, supplement the records. Details such as this, however (and Chinese customs generally), shall not be allowed to encumber these pages except when absolutely essential.

[2] In this book the transliteration of Chinese names into English is made as simple as possible by omitting the hyphen and aspirate and giving each character the same lettering.
The Chinese write their names as we write ours in the telephone book; that is, the clan or family name (taken from the book of the hundred clans) comes first. After this generally come two descriptive names—descriptive to the clan name. The practice heretofore has been largely to write these two descriptive names with a hyphen, the second being uncapitalized. For example, John Willian Jones in Chinese, under the old style, would be Jones John-william. This, however, is merely a foreign affair and means nothing to the Chinese, and, since it likewise means nothing to us (except in a dictionary sense), in this book use of the hyphen is discontinued, and the names, both family and descriptive, are placed singly and spelled with a capital. In fact, the author would have preferred, if custom had allowed (as eventually it may), to run all the names together, Japanese fushion, as, Sunyatsen, instead of Sun Yat-sen, or, as we use it in this book, Sun Yat Sen. Sun's name is sometimes latinized to Sun-yacius.

[1]

[2]