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A prestigious and inquisitive Ming or Qing gentleman from Suzhou is shipwrecked by mishap in the foreign land of Chaoxian where he is introduced to a strange script. He appreciates the qualities of this script, which represents sounds quite well, and on his return he learns more about this strange script and decides to adopt it for his Suzhounese dialect. It will be good for children or women who have difficulties memorizing the sounds of characters, and after all there is some precedent such that squiggly writing the Hui use to write Chinese or the "women's script" he has heard of being used in some faraway county. Seeing that this script does in fact help children learn pronunciation more quickly, as well as being better for quick informal notes, the Jiangnan gentry join in.
And so a modified version of Hangul becomes a pinyin analogue.