Looking at some guitar music in Chinese, I noticed that a notation system called 简谱 jiǎnpǔ "simple (numbered) tablature" is quite widespread. Is there any particular reason why this way of representing music is so common? It is virtually unseen in the West from my (not so deep) experience with music.
As Chinese only (fairly) recently began using the Latin alphabet for things (C, D, E...) I am curious if this preference for numbered representation reflects a tendency to reject alphabetic characters when possible (e.g. when transcribing names).