Chinese guardian lions standardized and formalized during the Ming and Qing dynasties into more or less its present form. (pinyin:) sì shì sì, shí shì shí, shí sì shì shí sì, sì shí shì sì shí, sì shí sì zhī shí shī zì shì sǐ de. (4 is 4, 10 is 10, 14 is 14, 40 is 40, 44 stone lions are dead.) Chinese guardian lions Chinese guardian lions or Imperial guardian lions, often miscalled "Foo Dogs" in the West, are a common representation of the lion in imperial China. Chinese guardian lions are sometimes referred to in English as shishi, from the
A Chinese-English Dictionary dictionary into the 1,813-page second edition (1912) with the addition of 67 more entries and numerous usage examples. Herbert Giles served as a British consular officer in late Qing dynasty China until from 1867 to 1892. After his return to England, he was appointed the second professor of Chinese at the University of Cambridge, in succession to Thomas Francis Wade. They are renowned for developing what was later called the Wade-Giles romanization system of Chinese, which Giles' "A Chinese-English Dictionary" firmly established as the standard in the Western world until the 1958 official international pinyin system (Wilkinson 2000: 93). In