The term Beiyang (Chinese: 北洋; pinyin: Běiyáng; Wade-Giles: Peiyang) literally means Northern Ocean. Initially a purely geographic term, it originated toward the end of the Qing dynasty, and it referred to the coastal provinces of Zhili (Traditional Chinese:直隸, Simplified Chinese: 直隶, pinyin: Zhílì, today's Hebei), Shandong and Liaoning that bordered the Yellow Sea (itself a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean) and surrounded the imperial capital of Beijing (then known as Peking). Zhili and Shandong were ethnically Han Chinese, while Liaoning was traditionally a Manchu province, but by the 19th century Han Chinese were the majority there as well.