Kiangsu

English

Map including part of KIANGSU PROVINCE 江蘇省 (AMS, 1955)

Alternative forms

• Kiang-su, Kiang Su

Etymology

From the Postal Romanization of the Nanking court dialect Mandarin 江蘇／江苏 (Jiāngsū), from before the modern palatalization of /k/.

Pronunciation

• enPR: kyǎngʹso͞oʹ, jē-ängʹso͞oʹ

Proper noun

Kiangsu

1. (obsolete or historical) Alternative form of Jiangsu: the province of China northeast of the Yangtze Delta.
   • 1907, “THE FAMINE IN KIANGPEH”, in The Missionary Herald‎^[1], volume 103, number 2, page 92:

     Some idea of the extent of the calamity, which is due to the excessive rains of the summer, resulting in the complete failure of the crops and the destruction of many homesteads, may be gathered from the fact that the committee with probably make an appeal for at least £250,000. Help will be solicited not only from Shanghai, but from Great Britain, America and the continent of Europe. Even should all the amount asked for be raised, it will only permit of an expenditure equal at most to about sixpence per head of the starving and homeless people. For although the term Kiangpeh is conveniently applied to the distressed district, the famine is felt in large portions of the four provinces of Kiangsu, Anhui, Honan, and Shantung, over a tract estimated at 40,000 square miles in area and in the most thickly populated part of the empire.

   • 1967, Chung-li Chang, The Chinese Gentry Studies on Their Role in Nineteenth-Century Chinese Society‎^[2], University of Washington Press, page 166:

     In "Notes of Ling-hsiao and I-shih," Kuo-wen chou-pao, chüan 9, No. 28, July 18, 1932, p. 1, Chang Ch'ien, native of Nan-t'ung, Kiangsu, who later founded the big cotton mills, is described as beginning to study poem and eight-legged sessay writing at twelve, becoming sheng-yüan at the early age of sixteen.

   • 1982 December 26, Charlotte Summer, “Tung Chih festival a time for rejoicing”, in Free China Weekly‎^[3], volume XXIII, number 51, Taipei, page 2:

     Wu Chung's Chu Chih Tsu stated: "It is a tradition that Tung Chih is as important as the New Year. The practice of Kowu is after all a good custom. Children in every house-hold kneel and kowtow before their parents." In Soochow of Kiangsu Province, people burned incense at daybreak. During the day, stores were closed and people ate and drank, as if they were celebrating the New Year.

   • December 2010, John Pollock, A Foreign Devil in China, World Wide Publications, →ISBN, page 168:

     Seven million people were homeless in North Kiangsu, and in Kirk Mosley's early days the Tsingkiangpu Hospital undertook relief work planned by Woods and equipped by Bell with a hired steam launch.

Further reading

• “Kiangsu, pn.”, in Lexico, Dictionary.com; Oxford University Press, 2019–2022.
• “Kiangsu”, in Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1996–present.
• “Kiangsu” in TheFreeDictionary.com, Huntingdon Valley, Pa.: Farlex, Inc., 2003–2024.

Anagrams

• Kuangsi