Foochow Romanized

Bàng-uâ-cê (abbr. BUC; ) or Fuzhou romanization (), is a Latin alphabet for the Fuzhou dialect of Eastern Min adopted in the middle of the 19th century by Western missionaries. It had varied at different times, and became standardized in the 1890s. Bàng-uâ-cê was mainly used inside of church circles, and was taught in some mission schools in Fuzhou. However, unlike its counterpart Pe̍h-ōe-jī for Hokkien, even in its prime days Bàng-uâ-cê was by no means universally understood by Christians.

== History == thumb|An English-Chinese Dictionary of the Foochow Dialect, 2nd Edition, published in 1905 thumb|:s:Dictionary of the Foochow dialect|Dictionary of the Foochow dialect, 3rd Edition, published in 1929 thumb|Hand-written note in Bàng-uâ-cê, ca. 1910. It reads: "...You are our dwelling place. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. And we are thankful, because Jesus died for us, resurrected, and enabled us to live in the life full of abundance. He helps us conform to the image of the Lord, and be patient and serve Him with all our heart. He teaches us to willingly forgive people..." After Fuzhou became one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened by the Treaty of Nanjing at the end of First Opium War (from 1839 to 1842), many Western missionaries arrived in the city. Faced with widespread illiteracy, they developed Latin alphabets for the Fuzhou dialect.