Well, if you have not racked up the frequent flyer miles to easily visit Jilin, China to check out the Koguryo UN World Heritage Sites, fear not, the Chinese have set-up 3D VR images of some of the sites:
1. Wandu Mountain Fortress Watch Tower.
2. Wandu Mountain Fortress Tombs.
It’s too bad that one can’t visit the Koguryo sites in North Korea. Well, at least the Chinese are using the McCune-Reischauer Romanization system for 高句麗 in English language brochures, web sites, etc. Besides, doesn’t Koguryo sound so much better than Gaoguli anyways?
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Well worth viewing.
Do the Chinese, in fact, use the Korean name Goguryeo rather than the Chinese name Gaoguli in English-language materials? The website was not Chinese. The high-resolution panoramic views were great.
I just did a little searching through .gov.cn sites and you are correct, Wangkon. The homepages for the Jilin provincial government and the Changchun city government use Goguryeo and Koguryo respectively. On non-governmental pages, Gaoguli is more commonly used in English translations.
Posted too quickly. I used the wrong pinyin. Among government websites, I could find only those two pages and one more using a Romanized Korean name of the disputed kingdom. Googling “Gaogouli” for sites ending in gov.cn yielded two pages of results.
Sonagi,
I think they use Koguryo more often than Gaoguli because the UN uses Koguryo.
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1135
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200407/01/eng20040701_148209.html
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1135
And the reason why UNESCO uses Koguryo is that much of Western scholarship uses it, particularly before 2003.
Who do you mean by “they”? The Chinese in general or the Chinese government? According to Google search results, both prefer Gaogouli to Koguryo. I found only three government webpages using the Romanized Korean spelling and about 20 webpages using the Pinyin Chinese spelling, including national ministries. I was surprised that UNESCO would use the Romanized Korean spelling since it was China that filed the application; I agree with you that the spelling choice probably reflects that the Romanized Korean spelling is in wider English usage.
Whoa, ease up on the throttle there. I feel like I’m talking to a 15 year old ethnic Chinese netizen (from Singapore).
It would make sense to have English language materials in the earlier Korean romanization since it’s in wider use in scholarship and that UNESCO itself uses it. Any English language tourist is likely going to be more familiar with that romanization rather than Pinyin. Besides, I doubt the Chinese at the time called it Gaoguli either. The Tang Dynasty didn’t use Mandarin and used something more similar to Cantonese. Thus 高句麗 would have sounded more like Gou-Geui-Lai.
I believe you’ve misread the tone of my post. I have always used the term Goguryeo since I first became aware of the kingdom while in Korea. I am not arguing which name is more correct. I am simply correcting your statement that “the Chinese” themselves prefer the Korean name. That is not true. It is true that UNESCO uses the Korean name transliterated into English and that a few Chinese organizations and government webpages use the transliterated Korean name, too.
Well, Chinese knows that Koguryo or Goguryeo is proto-Korean speaking Kingdom, so they can’t use Gaouli, because there is another Gaouli in China which is not even related to Koguryo.
It’s good that China did registered as UNESCO heritage because they are one of the kinds. It’s shame that Korea is not unified and these historic sites are not part of modern Korea. I guess it better to leave them as history rather than national pride.
I hope China doesn’t turn them to “Chinesenized” heritage because China have been accused of Chinazing East Asian history.
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