It's actually pinyin "The official Romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese form, to learners already familiar with the Latin alphabet."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin
My wife does that for me, since my Chinese is crap. She suggested it so people wouldn't be so put off at seeing the Chinese characters since everything else would be in English.