Were my natural mother to appear on my doorstep I would feel nothing but horror. This is not because I am angry or resentful towards her or the actions she took, but because I have living parents who have given me a life that I do not wish to be rent apart. I feel sympathy for my natural mother, who was young at the time and a victim of social attitudes. I was adopted in the early 1950s, and am fully aware of the circumstances surrounding my adoption. The actual name did not change.The nationalists of Taiwan have never accepted Pin-yin, and still refer to Peking. I don't think the Chinese as a whole mind what we call the city.George BealSurbiton, Surrey.

YOUR article " 'I must find the baby I gave away' " (21 May) concerning adoption roused me to respond on behalf of the silent majority - those of us who are adopted and happy. Under the Pin-yin system, the name of the city of Peking is rendered Bei-jing, which is now the official Chinese spelling using Roman characters. Thus it remained until 1949, when the Communists took over and restored the old capital, changing its name back to Pei-ching. In 1958, the Chinese government introduced a new and official system of romanisation called Pin-yin (phonetic spelling). In 1928 the nationalist government moved the capital to Nanking and changed the name of the old city to Pei-p'ing or Peiping ("northern peace"). Under the Wade-Giles romanisation system, the name was rendered Pei-ching, which means "northern capital". DR A J Brimicombe says that the name of the capital of China was changed to "Beijing" in 1949 (Letters, 21 May) I think he is wrong.

The name "Peking" is simply a western conventional spelling, accepted internationally for a very long time. Conversely, it would not be fair to expect the victims of products to bear losses in the hope of future advances that will in turn line the pockets of manufacturers.Richard C WilsonSheffield. Yet new provisions, such as the Consumer Protection Act 1987, still do not go far enough. Even stricter provisions are required to force manufacturers to recognise their duty to compensate those injured by their products rather than relying on the reluctance of the consumer to enter litigation. I would not advocate a system of punitive damages as this would rather miss the point of the tort system: to provide redress to those who have suffered loss, not to punish the guilty manufacturer. One need only look at the cases of the Thalidomide families to see how our negligence-based system of the 1960s failed plaintiffs. Fortunately it is not leading to starvation in Europe but it is leading to massive disruption in world food markets as we dump surpluses out- side Europe at knock-down prices subsidised by European taxpayers.