My post might have been misinterpreted. I was writing in response to the idea of using Baxter-Sagart for romanization instead of pinyin. I did not mean to say that historical reconstruction of Chinese languages was unnecessary. Language is of course instrumental to human existence, and the study of language is of course important to the study of history. However, I see absolutely no need for replacing pinyin with historical reconstructions just because a timeline is set in ancient China. Pinyin is widely recognized and understood, and using pinyin would save an expert reader from wasting time trying to remember reconstructions. It also assists an introductory reader who does not know Chinese characters and who might want to look up a name using pinyin. If reconstructions are used without the corresponding Chinese characters (the way this forum often omits Chinese characters in posts), things get even more confusing.
I seem to have been misinterpreted as well. You go into a lot of depth, but the one area you don't seem to cover very specifically is the one I was referring to - the one in the OP. The question was not about a Chinese POD or WI about Chinese history, but about long-term Chinese knock-ons of an earlier POD. Perhaps I read too much into it, assuming that in such a narrative historical figures would disappear early on.
If it's not a year-event style timeline, writing contact scenarios would be nonsense if written using pinyin, since the pinyin equivalents would almost certainly be divergent from OTL. Those few that would be exceptions could easily be handled by footnotes.
I apologize. You the clearly spent a fair amount of effort defeating the fellow you thought you were arguing with - the man arguing with a straight face that all ancient PODs, What Ifs, or discussion threads should be written in whatever the contemporary language of the period and region might have been. If I'd said something like "in this kind of timeline" perhaps I could have saved you the trouble of arguing against a strawman.
In my defense, I thought it was slightly obvious that I wasn't advocating all discussion of ancient China take place in an extinct language. And the comments of mine you clipped out of your reply might have hinted at what my broader meaning was.
lol
I'll return to the latter parts of your post, where we do have some actual philosophical differences. I'm afraid my afternoon is a bit full.