AGAINST

Xiong Bingqi

Vice President of the 21st Century Education Research Center

It is okay to introduce such a rule. However, not everyone should be forced to observe it, and it should only be applied in books, periodicals, newspapers, television programs, documents relating to foreign affairs and international academic conferences.

Disorder in the way of writing Chinese names doesn't exist in people's daily life but only appears in publications and on some public occasions. Individual citizens have the right to choose the way of writing their names, either family name or given name first, as long as it doesn't create confusion in daily life.

Zeng Jia

Student with Yunnan University

I think people can choose different ways of writing names based on different situations. For example, we generally follow the Chinese tradition of putting the family name first when giving information for a bank account or ticket reservation. But under other circumstances, like applying for a position in a transnational company, I think we had better observe foreigners' customs and write the given name before the family name.

When doing business with foreigners or when we are abroad, we adapt ourselves to foreign traditions. And in China, foreigners should follow our customs.

Deng Rongjun

Iqilu.com

Replacing English with pinyin in station names will confuse foreign passengers and is also wasting public resources.

Nowadays, even kindergarten children know the meaning of "South." Even though senior Chinese citizens may not know the English word, they can also get the right station. Name boards in stations are aimed at directing foreign passengers.

China has been adopting English to mark the railway station names for years, which also has been familiar to and accepted by the public. As the translation has been fixed, it should not be changed randomly. From a linguistic perspective, all language is aimed at communication. Random changes will hinder the smoothness of communication.

And changing the station names will waste a lot of resources as well, as all of the name boards have to be replaced.What a sum of cash and workforce it will cost to complete the job! Why couldn't they use the money and workforce to improve services?