Tianweiban
Encyclopedia
Tianweiban, formerly known as Tianmeidong, is a village in Donglu Town, Wenchang
County, Hainan
, China
with a population of roughly 50 people in 10 households.
master, in hopes that it would bring them prosperity; even the villagers themselves were not entirely clear on the meaning of the new name of their hometown, only knowing that the obscure final character was pronounced the same as "to bump (碰)" in their local dialect of Hainanese. The change began to cause inconvenience for the villagers because officials did not know how to enter the character into computers; villagers found themselves unable to obtain identity cards, marriage certificates, and other documents as a result.
The final character in the village name, which means "deep mud", is present in the Big5
standard commonly used for traditional Chinese character
s, where it has the code D5E4, as well as in Unicode
, where its codepoint is U+6E74. Although it is absent from GB 2312
, an old character encoding standard used in the People's Republic of China
, the newer character sets GBK
and GB 18030
, which supersede GB 2312, do contain the character, encoded as 9CB0. News reports in both China and Hong Kong referred to the character by describing its shape, rather than printing the actual character in question.
Wenchang
Wenchang is a county-level city located in the north east of Hainan province, China. It was promoted from a county to a city on November 7, 1995, and had a population of 86,551 in 1999...
County, Hainan
Hainan
Hainan is the smallest province of the People's Republic of China . Although the province comprises some two hundred islands scattered among three archipelagos off the southern coast, of its land mass is Hainan Island , from which the province takes its name...
, China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
with a population of roughly 50 people in 10 households.
Name change
The inhabitants of Tianmeidong changed their village's name in 2007 on the advice of a feng shuiFeng shui
Feng shui ' is a Chinese system of geomancy believed to use the laws of both Heaven and Earth to help one improve life by receiving positive qi. The original designation for the discipline is Kan Yu ....
master, in hopes that it would bring them prosperity; even the villagers themselves were not entirely clear on the meaning of the new name of their hometown, only knowing that the obscure final character was pronounced the same as "to bump (碰)" in their local dialect of Hainanese. The change began to cause inconvenience for the villagers because officials did not know how to enter the character into computers; villagers found themselves unable to obtain identity cards, marriage certificates, and other documents as a result.
The final character in the village name, which means "deep mud", is present in the Big5
Big5
Big-5 or Big5 is a character encoding method used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau for Traditional Chinese characters.Mainland China, which uses Simplified Chinese Characters, uses the GB instead.- Organization :...
standard commonly used for traditional Chinese character
Traditional Chinese character
Traditional Chinese characters refers to Chinese characters in any character set which does not contain newly created characters or character substitutions performed after 1946. It most commonly refers to characters in the standardized character sets of Taiwan, of Hong Kong, or in the Kangxi...
s, where it has the code D5E4, as well as in Unicode
Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems...
, where its codepoint is U+6E74. Although it is absent from GB 2312
GB 2312
GB2312 is the registered internet name for a key official character set of the People's Republic of China, used for simplified Chinese characters...
, an old character encoding standard used in the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
, the newer character sets GBK
GBK
GBK is an extension of the GB2312 character set for simplified Chinese characters, used in the People's Republic of China.GB abbreviates Guojia Biaozhun , which means national standard in Chinese, while K stands for Extension...
and GB 18030
GB 18030
GB18030 is a Chinese government standard describing the required language and character support necessary for software in China. In addition to the "GB18030 code page" this standard contains requirements about which scripts must be supported, font support, etc....
, which supersede GB 2312, do contain the character, encoded as 9CB0. News reports in both China and Hong Kong referred to the character by describing its shape, rather than printing the actual character in question.