Regarding transliteration of Chinese:

Strictly speaking, one can't transliterate Chinese since it doesn't use an alphabet. The normal symbols are ideographs; they represent a concept and not a sound. They do have a system called bopomo which is a syllabary, not unlike the hiragana and katakana* of Japanese, but used only in dictionaries and for educating the children. The official transcription system has varied over the years which is why we have the variant spellings Peking and Beijing representing the same sounds.

*Also known (to Ænigma) as Hiram and Kate.