Unless otherwise specified, the translations are mine. The only recurring exception to this rule comes with Chinese or Spanish periodicals that included their own English title. The Jinan University journal China and Malaysia (中國與南洋), for instance, might be translated as “China and Southeast Asia,” or “China and the South Seas,” but the editors chose their translation partially because the term “Southeast Asia” had yet to enter popular parlance.

While Chinese pinyin romanization has proven to be a useful tool for standardizing pronunciations and promoting language learning in the People’s Republic of China, its widespread adoption postdates most of the events in this book. Furthermore, many Chinese people created and used unique romanized names that drew from regional, dialectical, and personal preferences. For these reasons, this book defers to the romanizations that people used at the time, but the first time new names appear, it also includes the Chinese characters and pinyin. For example, the first time you encounter Albino Z. Sycip (Xue Minlao 薛敏老), this is how his name will appear.

The book adopts traditional characters (繁體字) when referencing an original publication that used traditional characters and simplified characters (简体字) when the original publication used simplified characters. For all other Chinese terms that appear in the text, this book uses traditional characters because that was the predominant form for the place and period under study.