After ten years of painstaking studies by Wu Shiqiu, a Qingyuan pensioner with only elementary-school education, Qingyuan Dialect Studies was in print a few days ago. It is ranked as a national key monograph of intangible cultural heritage.
The book reproduced Mandarin Chinese of Tang and Song Dynasties and unveiled the secret of Chinese dialects, which gained recognition and attention of national linguistic circle and various media, such as Guangming Daily, Zhejiang Daily, Sina.com and so on.
The book has been chosen by "Creative Commons China Mainland"(CC China Mainland) as a key monograph of intangible cultural heritage to be introduced at home and abroad, and published with the license of Creative Commons China Mainland version (CC protocol ). Up to now, there are only two books in the area of traditional Chinese culture published with CC protocol license. One is Records of Bohua Families of Traditional Chinese Medicine, a book published last year, and the other is Qingyuan Dialect Studies.
Wu Shiqiu is a retired worker in Qingyuan, who is obsessed with Qingyuan dialect. Despite of great difficulties, he concentrated his attention on the studies of Qingyuan dialect constantly for more than ten years. Recently, his book, Qingyuan Dialect Studies, 1,060,000 words long, was published by Zhejiang University Press. Falling into six chapters, the book systematically introduces characteristics, value and origin of Qingyuan dialect with rich, detailed statistical materials and precise, appropriate research. It is a well-written dialectological book with significant academic value.
In the 1990s, Akitani Hiroyuki, a linguistics professor at Ehime University (Japan), come to Qingyuan and found medieval and even ancient sound were well-preserved in Qingyuan dialect. After years of in-depth researches, Wu Qiushi holds that Qingyuan is the only one place where Mandarin Chinese of Tang and Song Dynasties are so well preserved.
