I'm agree with Mr. m.arangobus, probably you are talking about the taiwanese system to write chinese.
There are many ways to write chinese by phonetics transcriptions. The most used are PinYin and ZhuYin. In Mainland China, the most used is PinYin, and in Taiwan everybody use ZhuYin. In HongKong people also use another entry for typing on computers and cellphones but I don't have any idea about it.
There is another system called "tongyong" which is another way to use arabic letters to write chinese, also used mostly in Taiwan but it sees nobody use it anymore, and finally there is another system to write given names, till now I consider is not a real sistem but is a delivered phonetic transcription using the english phonetics. For example, 台北 is written as Taipei in stead of Taibei and 高雄 is KaoHsiung and not GaoXiong.