A tour guide held a flag as mainland Chinese tourists gathered before taking a Hong Kong bus trip on Oct. 2. Bloomberg News
A tour guide held a flag as mainland Chinese tourists gathered before taking a Hong Kong bus trip on Oct. 2. Bloomberg News
HONG KONG—Beijing’s decision to suspend issuance of travel permits for mainland tour groups bound for Hong Kong is expected to sharpen the blow to tourism in the city, which has been gripped by pro-democracy protests for a week.
The word "China" is derived from Cin (چین), a Persian name for China popularized in medieval Europe by the account of the 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo. The first recorded use in English dates from 1555. The Persian word is, in turn, derived from the Sanskrit word Cīna (चीन), which was used as a name for China as early as AD 150. There are various scholarly theories regarding the origin of this word. The traditional theory, proposed in the 17th century by Martino Martini, is that "China" is derived from "Qin" (秦), the westernmost of the Chinese kingdoms during the Zhou Dynasty, or from the succeeding Qin Dynasty (221–206 BC). The word Cīna is used in two Hindu scriptures – the Mahābhārata of the 5th century BC and the Laws of Manu of the 2nd century BC – to refer to a country located in the Tibetan-Burman borderlands east of India.
