Hey John, I don't know if you may have access to some resources that I am looking for, but I was wondering if you could point the way for me to some books that introduce the more traditional style of Chinese pinyin as interpreted by the West. Western scholars who wrote about, did research, and contributed to the development of China history used what was called I think the Roman alphabet of spelling out phonetic Mandarin or whatever dialect the scholars were working off of during their time. For example instead of saying Cai or Cao it would be spelled as T'sai and Tsao. Instead of saying Kong Zi it would be Kung Si. Of course interactions with Chinese in modern history predominantly came from the Guangdong and Fujian areas initially but at the same time I think for folks who have trouble with pinyin this can be a good stopgap.