Beijing

Language reform in the 1950s established an official Romanized spelling system for use in transcribing Chinese words in other languages. In the new (and current) system the old CHI and KI were replaced with JI, and, Běijīng was spelled Beijing, and not Peking any more.

It was so named because access to the area was barred to most of the subjects of the realm. Government functionaries and even the imperial family were permitted only limited access; the emperor alone could enter any section at will.

Beijing, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's most populous national capital city as well as China's second largest city after Shanghai.

Few cities in the world have served for so long as the political headquarters and cultural centre of an area as immense as China. The city has been an integral part of China's history over the past eight centuries, and nearly every major building of any age in Beijing has at least some national historical significance.

Both Beijing and Peking actually refer to the same two characters in Chinese, that is, 北京. Their different spellings are a result of them being products of different romanisation systems. Beijing, the newer of the two, is based on Hanyu Pinyin, which is the current standard romanisation system for Mandarin Chinese.