An illustration of a magnifying glass. An illustration of a magnifying glass.

What you see is pinyin, literally 'spell out the sound'. It's a system for romanizing Chinese ideograms, used in mainland China for Mandarin, a.k.a. putonghua.

George Clooney, Meryl Streep and other voice actors had to be persuaded, but a new PBS documentary (mostly) leads by example in stressing the first syllable. By Sarah Lyall Jeff Goldblum was in the ...