Mongolia, the Tangut country, and the solitudes of northern Tibet/Volume 1/On the terms Pehling and Fanqui
PEHLING AND FANQUI.
P. 41.
The footnote here, which says ' Pehling is the Chinese for Englishmen, Fan-qui for Frenchmen,' needs correction. Fan-Kwei is simply the term usually rendered 'foreign devils,' and is applied to Europeans generally. Pe-ling appears to be a corruption of the Western Asiatic Firingi, i.e. ' a Frank,' a term which in some older Chinese notices appears in the form Fu-lang. Pe-ling, or philing, we know from Huc,[1] Hodgson, and Edgar[2] is the name which the Chinese at Lhassa give to the English in India, and it perhaps came to them through the Kashmiris and other Mahommedan traders to Lhassa.
'Peh-ling Fan-qui' in the comprador's utterance quoted, means, I imagine, 'the Frank foreigners' who come by sea, in contradistinction to the Russ foreigners who come by land, and with whom the Chinese perhaps recognise something more of affinity.—[Y.]