Qian Xuantong (Paperback)

High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles Qian Xuantong (1887-January 17, 1939) was a Chinese linguist. Born as Qian Xia ( ), he had the courtesy name Deqian ( ). Born in Huzhou, Zhejiang, Qian was trained in traditional Chinese philology. After receiving his university education in Japan, Qian held a number of teaching positions in mainland China. He was a student of Zhang Binglin; some of Zhang's works were copied and printed in Qian's remarkable seal script handwriting. As a philologist, Qian was the first to reconstruct the vowel system of Old Chinese in IPA. A close friend of Lu Xun, Qian was a key figure in the May Fourth Movement. Despite his close relationship with the Chinese classics, he promoted the abolition of classical Chinese. He was also a strong supporter of Esperanto, at one time even proposed the substitution of Chinese by it. He and Liu Bannong did their best to promote vernacular Chinese, attacking such classical Chinese stylists as Lin Shu.