A little stumble in romanization recognition

[Mark Mandel]

My son writes:

---------- Forwarded message ----------

I thought you might find this a little amusing. I've been reading old
Doonesbury, and during Duke's term as ambassador to China there is a
recurring character who I had always assumed to be fictional.

It wasn't until tonight that I realized that Teng Hsiao-Ping is the
Wade-Giles form of a rather famous name I hadn't started seeing until
Wade-Giles had been pretty thoroughly phased out for discussing modern
history - which, of course, it hadn't been in the mid-1970s.

---------- End forwarded message ----------

Mark Mandel

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