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77-633: Bobai was the home town of the linguist Wang Li , who described the Bobai dialect with its unusually large number of tones . Bobai County is divided into 28 towns: The county is served by the Yulin–Tieshangang railway . The railway opened for freight service in May 2015. Passenger service to Bobai railway station started on April 1, 2016. In May 2007, Bobai was the site of large protests held by local people against China's one-child policy , and triggered

154-516: A dictionary of ancient Chinese. He began to work on it, but after completing fifty-odd pages, the manuscript was confiscated and destroyed when Red Guards raided his home. He only restarted the work when the Zhonghua Publishing House invited him to compile a dictionary in the early 1980s ( see below ). While he was under suppression and imprisonment, he continued his study. During daytime at labour, he reflected and expanded on

231-512: A famous Chinese linguist specializing in English especially disagreed with Wang and claimed that a developed linguistic system did exist in traditional Chinese literature, such as the liu shu 六書 ('six scripts'), a system for classifying and structurally analyzing the origin and development of Hanzi, the Chinese characters. Ye Shengtao Ye Shengtao (28 October 1894 – 16 February 1988)

308-557: A great impact on improving the Modern Chinese language education. He brought a new idea to the Chinese educators, i.e. students should be taught the methods of learning, instead of the long and detailed content in books. This idea was a breakthrough in traditional Chinese education, which used to rely heavily on memorization and indoctrination. Also, Ye promoted critical thinking and the importance of personal value judgment. He suggested that these learning skills should be built within

385-597: A journalist and an educator. Throughout his life, Ye worked a lot for literary movement. Under the influences of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 commonly known as the New Culture Movement , Ye indulged himself in his literary career. He participated in a student organization called 'Xinchao She' ("New Tide Society" 新潮社 1919-1920) of Peking University , and started publishing fictions, poems, prose, literary criticism and scripts of drama etc. Ye

462-515: A large amount of his works into books, including The General Principles of Ancient Chinese , The History of Chinese Phonology , and The Dictionary of Paronyms . He also started to revise the A Draft History of the Chinese Language at the age of 80, and expanded his original work A Draft History of the Chinese Language into History of Chinese Phonology, History of Chinese Syntax and History of Chinese Lexicography . In 1984, at

539-457: A lot on his writing, "If I hadn't read English, if I had not got in touch with literature in English, I wouldn't have written novels." His works were retrospective, thoughtful and critical. They were not only based on feeling, but on actual and objective observations. Ye was not only a writer, but also a reporter. These insights became the rich ingredients in his works. He shaped a new dimension to Chinese modern literature. Ye Shengtao Memorial Hall

616-472: A teacher, I knew something about life in educational circles and I wrote about that. In a rather elementary and superficial way I watched the gradual development of the Chinese Revolution and I wrote about that too. Most of his journalistic works were inspired by people's lives. He believed that literature was not only for leisure, but also a tool to reveal life and stimulate readers to contemplate

693-455: A variety of subjects and genres. The hardship of the war did not stop his research in linguistics. By the end of the war, Wang's research had expanded to phonology, morphology, syntax, poetry and dialectal studies, and he began to plan for the future of Chinese linguistics. He said, "as the language of Chinese starts to prosper, Chinese may appear as one of the foreign languages, parallel to English, French, German and Italian in universities across

770-457: Is for Life" ( 文學為人生 ). Ye was born on 28 October 1894 in Wu County , Jiangsu province. His name at birth was Ye Shaojun ( 葉紹鈞 ), and his courtesy name was Bingchen ( 秉臣 ). His father worked as a bookkeeper for a landlord and they lived a very modest life. When he was six years old, he entered a mediocre school for primary study. He often followed his father to work. He travelled around

847-399: Is replaced by a pronoun later in the sentence. Gangmu Sentence ( 纲目句 ) is similar to modern English topicalization. After reading the paper, Chao suggested that Wang delete the postscript, claiming that he could not assert the grammatical rules of a language before fully acquiring it. Afterwards, Chao's words "It is easier to claim the presence but harder to claim the absence of things" became

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924-468: Is set in Simplified Chinese for accessibility by a general audience, although there are extensive usage notes to help readers distinguish between ancient variant forms, tongjia 'rebus borrowing' characters, and modern simplified forms. In 1957, Wang finished writing the book Hanyu Shigao 漢語史稿 A Draft History of the Chinese Language . The three volumes of the book respectively demonstrates

1001-552: The Cihai or Ciyuan for definitions incompatible with the historical evolution of a character's meaning. In addition to giving the original Classical and pre-Classical definitions of a character, it also provides Old Chinese rime group and Middle Chinese fanqie , and gives collections of characters of common etymological origin, often, but not necessarily, derived from the same graphic element (e.g., 才，財，材 and 家，嫁，居). It also carefully notes definitions that arose post-Classically during

1078-863: The Vice-Minister of Education . He was also elected as the Committee of the Fifth Standing Committee of the National People's Congress , the National Committee of The Fifth Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), and the Chairman of China Association for Promoting Democracy . Ye died in Beijing on 16 February 1988 at the age of 93. For Ye, education and journalism were inseparable. Ye had

1155-623: The "Teaching for Literature and History"" ( Wenshi Jiaoxue 文史教學). Ye was one of the establishers of the "Literary Alliance for Anti-Japanese Imperialism" ( 文藝界反帝抗日大聯盟 ). Ye was responsible for a number of posts in the authority. Following the Communist Revolution, Ye served as the Vice-director of General Administration of Press and Publication ( 出版總署副署長 ), the President of People Education Publication ( 人民教育出版社社長 ), and

1232-416: The 1940s entitled "An Ideal Dictionary" (理想的字典). In general, the work is informed by and incorporates the principles of Western historical linguistics, something that Wang felt was missing in previous dictionaries that descended more-or-less directly from China's native philological traditions. In the preface, Wang criticized some incorrect interpretations of citations in previously published dictionaries like

1309-516: The Bobai dialect, Wang presumed that cuōkǒu (撮口, "round mouth"), one of the four traditional ways of classifying syllable finals of Mandarin dialects , does not exist in Liangguang area, as it does not exist in the Bobai dialect. However, Chao pointed out in his letters to Wang that it was wrong for him to overgeneralize the dialectal patterns in a large area with multiple dialects solely based on

1386-723: The Chinese teacher of a school set up by the Shanghai Commercial Press ( 商務印書館上海印刷廠 ). At the same time, he became the editor of primary textbooks of the Shanghai Commercial Press in 1915. Ye had been living in an era of instability, including the 1894 Sino-Japanese War , the Hundred Days' Reform , and later the Sphere of Influence ( 列強割據 ). His early life experiences affected his sense of nationalism and contributed to his later career as

1463-551: The Wang Li Academic Forum was held in Beijing. Scholars and linguists from different countries came and paid respect to the great linguist Wang Li. In the same year, the book Wang Li Xian Sheng Ji Nian Lun Wen 王力先生纪念论文 (Festschrift of Wang Li) was published. Wang pointed out in his book Zhong Guo Yu Yan Xue Shi 中国语言学史 (History of Chinese Linguistics) that in the past, Chinese scholars mistakenly regarded philology as linguistics and overly emphasized exploring

1540-403: The age of 84, he started to compile a dictionary for ancient Chinese, writing thousands of characters everyday, regardless of his deteriorated vision and other health conditions. In order to minimize the cataract's hindrance, he bought many magnifiers, switching from one to the other so that he could continue reading and writing, until he was no longer able to work. In the postscript of the work,

1617-525: The age of seven, inspired by one of the four Great Classical Chinese novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms . However, after he graduated from primary school at the age of 14, his family could no longer support his education. As a result, Wang started to educate himself by reading a large number of books. At the age of seventeen, Wang Li also began to tutor his little brother Xiangrui while the family stilled struggled under poverty and could not provide

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1694-429: The awareness of the public towards these social weaknesses. Ye was not only writing stories, but also reporting the fallacies in society. His writings were not only for leisure but feeding the rest by knowing and reflecting the reality, "...the basic requirement for writing fiction is a pair of penetrating and observant eyes and my eyes are not penetrating enough...Of course, it is not necessary to train one's eyes just for

1771-405: The basis of truth and reality that made his stories full of power. "Emotion seems like the shining light, while description and assessment are spotted by this light," Ye said. This speech somehow showed that Ye was not only a story teller, but a great artist. Ye's realistic writing style became the role model for many other writers. He also admitted that reading different western pieces did help him

1848-402: The city and experienced the lives of the poor. In 1907, Ye entered Caoqiao Secondary School ( 草橋中學 ). After his graduation, he worked as a primary school teacher, before being dismissed by the school in 1914. Finding himself unemployed, he devoted himself entirely to writing classical Chinese novels, which were published in "Libailiu Magazine" (《禮拜六》 "Saturday Magazine"), until he found work as

1925-757: The department was merged into the Chinese Department at Peking University in Beijing, China. By then, Wang served as the department chair of the Department of Chinese Language Studies at Peking University, and was also a member of the advisory board of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and State Commission on Language Reform. He was actively engaged in the institution and transmission of pinyin (the romanization system of Mandarin Chinese pronunciation) and putonghua (Modern Standard Mandarin). Wang insisted that pinyin should be represented in

2002-427: The dictionary's editorial team writes that Wang had worked on the dictionary seven to eight hours per day in the last few years of his life, completing a preface and a little more than four out of the twelve sections of the work. Wang died at the age of 86 from complications of cerebrovascular disease. Although he was not able to finish writing the dictionary, six of his students and colleagues collaborated and finished

2079-593: The discovery of the fourteen boxes of books one turning point of his life. In the same year, Wang was hired by a local school to teach primary school students Chinese. Three years later, he was funded by his colleagues and the Principal of the school to further pursue his studies in Shanghai . In 1924, Wang enrolled at Shanghai Southern University and subsequently at the University of China. Two years later, he

2156-434: The editor of Kaiming Press (Kaiming Shu Dian 開明書店). He started to edit books on Chinese language and storybooks for children. "Editing is no easy task." To Ye, being an editor was never simply a job, but a career. "Recklessness is strictly forbidden in editing, you have to check everything in person. Editors must be earnest to their publications, their reporters, and their readers." Editor plays an important role in monitoring

2233-651: The elimination of variant characters ( 異體字 ). He also compiled and standardized the Chinese character for publishing and formulated the Chinese Phoneticization Scheme (Hanyu Pinyin Fang'an 《漢語拼音方案》). All his efforts helped to improve the quality and organization of editorial work. Most importantly, Ye promoted vernacular Chinese in publishing. His magazines and newspapers were mostly published in vernacular style, which greatly facilitated other journalists and readers to read. All these contributed to

2310-612: The final outcome. Ye suggested that "seriousness" is the key of being a successful editor. He had always upheld this attitude in his works. Ye devoted himself to editing and publishing for his whole life . His enthusiasm on his "first and ultimate" career had never stopped . During the Second Sino-Japanese War , Ye moved to Leshan with his family and worked as a professor at the Department of Chinese at Wuhan University . In 1946, he returned to Shanghai and resumed his editorship at Kaiming Press. In his entire life, Ye

2387-406: The first Linguistics Department among Chinese universities. Wang himself designed the course syllabi and content for most of the courses. He integrated his research into teaching and used his own research as teaching materials. He believed that "students should not be taught through books bought by the teacher but through books written by the teacher". Many of his research works and notes were used as

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2464-403: The form of Latin alphabet, and Pinyin should be taught to students in the first year of school. While Wang was devoted to promoting the transmission and advancement of the language of Chinese and its application, he continued his research in morphology , semantics , rhetoric , lexicography and experimental phonology , and the inheritance of traditional Chinese linguistics. Wang then started

2541-521: The historical development of Chinese phonology, grammar and lexicon, and illustrates the progress of transformation from classical Chinese to modern Chinese. Wang's academic career was severely hindered during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). He was publicly humiliated and was sentenced to hard labour from 1966 to 1971, experiencing enormous devastation and depression. Wang had earlier made an agreement with Commercial Press to write

2618-470: The importance of feeling and emotion throughout his journals. Characters in Ye's work were vivid and he deeply penetrated into and shared their inner feelings. The popular writer Zhao Jingshen ( 趙景深 ) held that Ye was a special figure in the field of literature, describing him transcendent and extraordinary. The beauty of his works lasted despite any conditions. The expression of emotions and feelings were built on

2695-459: The importance of using the comparative methodologies used in historical linguistics to compare the feature of Chinese and western languages, to build an independent system of Chinese grammar. He considered this work as a "manifesto" that directed his later works and research in Chinese linguistics. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), Wang supported himself through a great number of publications, including newspaper columns and essays on

2772-735: The linguistic behaviors of one single dialect. Taking Chao's advice, Wang narrowed his research down to the study of the dialect in Bobai county. Afterwards, Wang went back to China in 1931 and started teaching at Tsinghua University in Beijing, ranked among the top three academic institutions in China. In his spare time, he produced various works of literature including books about Greek and Roman literature and translations of Émile Zola 's Nana , Molière 's plays and Baudelaire 's Les Fleurs du mal . While Wang taught General Linguistics and Chinese Phonology for two years at Tsinghua University, his several dozen translations of various works became one of

2849-432: The literature instead of the language itself. He decisively claimed that there is a difference between philology and linguistics: while the former relies on the investigation of earlier literature and a language's historical development, the latter studies the language itself and generates systematic and scientific linguistic theories. Wang's distinction of philology and linguistics was questioned by many scholars; Xu Guozhang,

2926-517: The medieval and late imperial periods, and alerts readers to possibly unreliable definitions appearing only once in historical texts (see hapax legomenon ). The work (published only in Traditional Chinese) was immediately recognized as an authoritative reference for scholars engaged in linguistic or historical research and was awarded first prize in the fourth National Lexicographical Works Prize. In 1990, three years after Wang died,

3003-514: The miserly pay for labor from the Chinese government by saying that with salaries being so low, 薪水 should be renamed 茶(tea)水(water) or 风(wind)水(water), as the only thing people could buy with the scarce amount of money was tea or wind. Such stories resonated with those who suffered during wartime and those who worked and lived at the bottom of society. After the war, Wang started to teach at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong in 1946 and founded

3080-517: The modernization and reformation of Chinese grammar throughout his whole life. His most famous books include Zhongguo Yinyunxue 中国音韵学 (Chinese Phonology), Zhongguo Wenfa Chutan 中国文法初探 (An Exploratory Study of Chinese Grammar), and Wang Li Guhanyu Zidian 王力古汉语字典 (Wang Li's Character Dictionary of Ancient Chinese). Wang Li was born to a poor family in Bobai County , Guangxi , China. He first discovered his interest in literature and novels at

3157-436: The money for Xiangrui to go to primary school. Wang Li's talent as a tutor brought him several other young children from the county to study with him. Gradually, Wang built a private school at his house. Wang did not adopt the general teaching style employed by other private schools at the time, which emphasized memorization of text over comprehension. Instead, Wang provided explicit explanation of each text by thoroughly analyzing

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3234-591: The motto of Wang's academic career throughout his whole life. In 1926, under the advice of Chao, Wang went to Paris to further pursue his study of linguistics. He hoped to learn from the western linguistic theories and bring them back to China. Wang supplemented his education by translating French literature into Chinese, and his works were greatly recognized and praised by the editor of the Commercial Press, Ye Shengtao . Ye spoke highly of Wang's translation, commenting that "I cannot comment on faithfulness (to

3311-593: The original work) and expressiveness, but there is no doubt that his translation is filled with elegance and taste." Five years later, Wang finished his education in France with a doctorate degree in the study of Bobai phonology. He first focused on dialects in Liangguang region, which includes Guangdong and Guangxi in Southern China. Based on his observation and intuition as a first language speaker of

3388-488: The people during the hardship of wartime. Wang's anecdotes and essays were once criticized by Wen Yiduo , a famous Chinese poet, for their vulgarity and bad taste, which in Wang's opinion were a genuine reflection of people's lives. In one of Wang's essays, Salaries , he pointed out that the word salaries "薪(firewood)水(water)" originally refers to money to buy firewood and water—money needed for sustenance. However, Wang derided

3465-432: The players of Chinese opera. The Shanghai newspapers refused to mention this incident because of political pressure. As a journalist, Ye denounced "Why are the journalists so hardhearted to ignore this shocking massacre? Why are they so afraid of the fact? It's ridiculous that nobody would tell the truth." Ye thus founded Gōnglǐ Rìbào ( The Truth Daily 《公理日報》) with Zheng Zhenduo and Hu Yuzhi (胡愈之1896－1986), aimed to reveal

3542-458: The protagonists in Ye's works were the exploited, the disabled and the prosecuted who were in lower social class. Ye had worked consistently on reflecting the truth and reality in his works. He expressed his democratic and socialist ideas through his novel series such as "The Fire" ( Huozai 《火災》), "Under the Horizon"( Xiàn xià 《線下》) and "A scarecrow" ( Dào cao rén 《稻草人》. These pieces focused on

3619-498: The protest in Yangmei , Rongxian . The small office of a grassroots NGO for sex workers' rights was ransacked and its leader Ye Haiyan was also attacked. This Guangxi location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Wang Li (linguist) Wang Li ( Chinese : 王力 ; 10 August 1900 – 3 May 1986), courtesy name Wang Liaoyi ( 王了一 ) and birth name Wang Xiangying ( 王祥瑛 ),

3696-544: The rapid development of modern journalism in China. Ye was an excellent educator and talent scout, too. He educated and discovered many outstanding young authors and editors like Ba Jin , Ding Ling , and Dai Wangshu . On 30 May 1925, a bloody massacre took place in Shanghai, known as May Thirtieth Movement (五卅運動 Wǔsà- yùndòng). About 2000 Shanghai workers and students ushered in a vigorous anti-imperialist movement, protesting imperialist domination and demanding to abolish

3773-415: The readers could not even understand the content. "If anybody asks about my career, I would say, my first career is editor, second is teacher," Ye said. Ye had spent much of his life on editing and publishing. The Shanghai Commercial Press was the starting point of Ye's editorship. He became the editor of the press since 1923. By the end of 1930, Ye quit the post in the Shanghai Commercial Press and became

3850-408: The reality. He felt obliged to let the reader know what was actually happening around. This was one of the reasons why he wanted to combine literature with journalism. He thought that literary works should also be used to arouse youngsters' awareness and responsiveness towards society . This ideology resembles the journalistic principle of telling the truth. Ye was also a reporter of life. Readability

3927-411: The reasons why he was not offered the expected professorship after two years' teaching. In order to compensate for the unbalanced attention he gave to his job at the university, Wang immersed himself in the study of linguistics and wrote An Exploratory Study of Chinese Grammar ( 中国文法学初探 ), which earned him the professorship after four years' lecturing at Tsinghua University. In the book, Wang underlines

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4004-595: The responsibility and started to compile the four-volume textbook 古代漢語 Ancient Chinese . He included selections of classical Chinese literature with detailed annotation, lessons on background knowledge, and a glossary of commonly used words, combining theory and practical usage as the method of instruction. This textbook, printed in Traditional Chinese, is still used by Chinese language and literature students at Peking University and other major language and literature departments in China. The glossary served as

4081-402: The sake of writing but trained eyes do, in reality, nourish life." (Ye Shengtao, 'Guoqu Suitan', op. cit., p. 46.) Ye's first academic essay was about children literature, called Children's Concept ( 兒童之觀念 ), criticizing how feudalism affected children's lives in China. In fact, Ye was the first writer who created fairy tales in the 1920s. His writing "A Scarecrow"( Dào cǎo rén 《稻草人》)

4158-418: The society. Ye and other editors of The Truth Daily severely criticized the unfairness of the society. This newspaper served as a watchdog over the despotic power, and initiated the concept of "freedom of press" in the early modern Chinese society. Due to financial difficulties and disagreement among the editors, The Truth Daily finally terminated after running for 22 days. Yet Ye has never stopped pursuing

4235-445: The society. Ye's fairy tales were simple, yet, with deep meaning inside it. He believed that children should have an understanding of their surrounding so as to enhance their critical power. Through Ye's stories, children could gradually acquire a clearer picture of society and their relationships with it. Ye's language was refined and eloquent, and was known for his ability to choose just the right words to express himself. Ye emphasized

4312-507: The starting point of the 古汉语常用字字典 Dictionary of Commonly Used Characters in Ancient Chinese . With Wang as the original editor-in-chief, this dictionary has proven to be extremely popular, having undergone over 100 printings since its initial publication in 1980 (most recent revision, 5th ed. in 2018) and is by far the most widely used (and often required) reference work for Classical Chinese for secondary school students. As such, it

4389-422: The students and were the basis for students' lifelong learning. Ye was passionate in reflecting the real life in his works: In retrospect, I seem never to have written about anything of which I had only vague or hazy knowledge. In other words, I cannot write anything by merely imagining it, though I do not banish the element of fancy. I lived in cities, towns and villages, and I wrote what I had observed there. As

4466-493: The study of Classical Chinese, believing that "in order to catch up with the world's advanced study in the science of language, one has to perform historical analysis on the linguistic phenomena and its development patterns." Per request of the Ministry of Education of China's objective of rehabilitating college students' abilities to read Classical Chinese and promoting the transmission of traditional Chinese literature, Wang took

4543-406: The study of linguistics". Wang wrote in the postscript of his paper on the topic of the grammar of Classical Chinese that two specific sentence structures Fanzhao Sentence ( 反照句 ) and Gangmu Sentence ( 纲目句 ) are only commonly observed in Chinese and are very rare in western linguistics. Fanzhao Sentence ( 反照句 ) occurs when an object or objective phrase is placed at the beginning of the sentence and

4620-459: The suffocation of the lower-class people. His highly praised fiction "Ni Huanzhi" 《倪煥之 》 revealed the pathetic life of an intellectual called "Ni Huanzhi". Ye discovered that many people in the New China were selfish, apathetic, hypocritic and conservative. People gave up their values in exchange for a stable life. Ye's works shared a sense of irony. He expressed his discontent in a bid to arouse

4697-437: The syntactic and semantic components of the texts. At the age of 21, Wang was invited to one of his students' house for dinner. He accidentally found fourteen boxes of books, ranging from history to astronomy to medicine, accompanied by the authors' footnotes and literature reviews of various works. Wang asked the host of the family whether he could borrow them and the host kindly lent them to him. Later in his life, Wang considered

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4774-465: The technique of carving the worm is elementary and uncomplicated, while carving of the dragon requires meticulousness and precision. Wang metaphorically used the phrase "carve the worm" to refer to the stories he wrote about common life, including personal anecdotes and his ruminations, parallel to his other eminent and well-known "carve the dragon" works. This collection of essays is less academically rigid but profound and reflective, which deeply influenced

4851-582: The textbooks and were directly sent to be published right after the courses ended. As the aftermath of the war drifted away, the Chinese government began to switch its prioritization from war efforts into developing literacy rates, implemented through a series of policy in language reform. By the time the State Commission on Language Reform was founded (1954), the number of students in the Linguistics Department increased rapidly and

4928-722: The texts and materials he memorized and wrote down his thoughts at night. When the Cultural Revolution ended, Wang Li had finished writing two books on classical Chinese poetry, the Classic of Poetry and Chu Ci . After the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, Wang was determined to work harder to compensate for the six years he had lost due to the political upheaval. He was invited to give lectures at different universities and conferences, and responded to letters of inquiry of different areas including writing, Pinyin learning and foreign language acquisition. Wang put together

5005-455: The truth. After the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), he participated in the struggle against Nationalist government, striving for democracy and the freedom of press. Realism became the most sustainable hallmark of Ye Shengtao. Ye was one of the pioneers in realistic writing. His writing was like a mirror, reflecting the rotten side of society and human traits. Being an educator, Ye had many narrations on intellectuals in his works. Many of

5082-410: The unfair treaties. The demonstrators thundered "Down with the imperialists!". Workers throughout China responded with a general strike and mass demonstrations. British police then suppressed the demonstrators with violence and killed 12 Chinese in the event. Till 1 June, more than 20 Chinese were killed. None of the Shanghai newspapers reported this tragedy. The front-page news were mainly the gossip of

5159-490: The whole picture of this tragedy regardless of the imperialist power, in order to arouse the awareness and nationalism of the general public and also to promote "the spirit of May 30th movement" across China. In addition to reporting the truth, The Truth Daily 《公理日报》provided a forum for public discussion, called "Shèhuì Cáipànsuǒ" ("Tribunal of the Society"〈社會裁判所〉), which encouraged reader to express their viewpoints towards

5236-399: The work with his advice and instructions, and named it The Wang Li Character Dictionary of Ancient Chinese , in his memory with the permission of his widow Xia Weixia ( 夏蔚霞 ). The editorial team completed the dictionary in 1998 (publishing it in 2000) in the spirit of Wang's ideal ancient Chinese dictionary, which he outlined in the dictionary's preface and previously in an essay written in

5313-590: The world. By the time it happens, is there a Chinese dictionary as good as the Oxford Dictionary, or a formal Chinese grammar system as advanced as the Essentials of English Grammar of Jespersen ?" During the war, Wang also wrote a book called 龙虫并雕斋琐语 (Trivial Talk of Dragon and Worm Carving) , a collection of prose and essays he wrote in Kunming , Southern China. In traditional Chinese craftwork,

5390-458: The writers at that period was that they were not equipped with good writing skills. Their wordings were inaccurate and vague in meaning. Very often, only well educated people could appreciate their works. The writers neglected the importance of practicability. Hence, literature was not promoted to the general public. Ye thought that one could only write something artistic if one could write something practical and understandable. It would be useless if

5467-429: Was a Chinese linguist, educator, translator and poet, described as the founder of Chinese linguistics. His work expands a wide range in Chinese linguistics, including phonology, grammar and lexicography, historical linguistics and dialectal studies. He was also the founder of the first Chinese Linguistics Department at Tsinghua University. He brought the western modern linguistic methodologies back to China and strove for

5544-595: Was a Chinese writer, journalist, educator, publisher and politician. He was a founder of the Association for Literary Studies ( 文學研究會 ), the first literature association during the May Fourth Movement in China. He served as the Vice-Minister of Culture of the People's Republic of China . Throughout his life, he was dedicated to publishing and language education. He subscribed to the philosophy that "Literature

5621-422: Was a prominent characteristic in Ye's works. It means how efficient a reader can perceive and understand a passage. As a journalist, Ye put great emphasis on the use of language. This might be because he had been a teacher for more than 10 years before he became an editor. He thought that writings were for the reader and he considered writing as a means of communication between readers and authors. A major problem of

5698-567: Was admitted to the Academy of Chinese Learning at Tsinghua University, where he studied with Yuen Ren Chao , Liang Qichao and Wang Guowei , whose instruction and guidance immensely inspired and influenced Wang in the study of linguistics. Among the thirty-two students that entered Tsinghua University in the same year as Wang, he was the only one that chose to study linguistics with Chao. Wang said that "While Liang encourages innovation, Chao emphasizes practicality, both of which are indispensable to

5775-608: Was also an editor in PuShe (樸社, 1923). In 1921, Ye, Mao Dun and Zheng Zhenduo founded the earliest literary society of the New Literature Movement, the "Wenxue Yanjiu Hui", (文學研究會 "Association for Literary Studies"), advocating realism art but rejecting the principle "Art is for Art's Sake". In 1936, Ye, Mao Dun and Hong Shen ( 洪深 ) established the "Chinese Literature and Art Society" ( Zhongguo Wenyi jia Xiehui 中國文藝家協會). In 1941, he became an editorial committee of

5852-499: Was published in 1923. This children's reading was very popular among numerous youngsters. Another 'fairy tale was "A Stone Figure of an Ancient Hero". ( Gǔdāi yīngxióng de shíxiàng 《古代英雄的石像》) This story was about a stone which had been sculpted into a hero statue. The message behind this easy-to-read story was to ridicule the authorities who were arrogant and insensitive to his people. Ye's student, Ding Ling, once praised that his fairy tales were able to induce readers to think more about

5929-454: Was very much involved in the field of journalism. From 1925 to 1929 was Ye's new era of publications. He edited many famous magazines and newspapers, below are some of his works: Ye's vision in modern Chinese language catalyzed the development of modern journalism in China. Ye was eager to advocate the standardization of modern Chinese language including the standardization of grammar, rhetoric, vocabulary, punctuation, simplified character, and

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