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Q: Whose bright idea was it to put Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces next to each other?
I feel like an idiot. I literally just found out these are two different places, not alternate spellings for the same province. I know they differ in tone slightly, but c'mon! How is this not confusing to Chinese people? Is there some interesting history behind this, like they used to be part of the same state, or is this just a totally random occurrence?
Couple that with Henan Hebei and Hubei and my head is also spinning.
Hainan, Yunnan, Hunan, Henan........ and here, all these years, I thought my geography was pretty good ....... not so!!
Because you guys use Pinyin, not characters, it's qutie different in characters:山西，陕西;
河南，海南，云南，湖南~
It is an ancient plot to confuse Westerners and give us headaches.
Maybe somewhere in the past, they were all trying to copy each other's names, but didn't quite get it right. Seems to be a common trend in every aspect of Chinese life.
