image

1925 graduation photo of Xiao Jialin

Xiao Jialin (1897-1968)

Courtesy name Xiaocun, art name Dichen. Born in Jiulong Xiao Village, Taoshu Administrative Village, Chitian Township, Fengxin County, Jiangxi. Educator, linguist, and dictionary compiler.

In 1925, Xiao Jialin graduated from the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at Peking Normal University, where he majored in phonology, after which he took up a long tenure at the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China. During this time he devoted himself to the Mandarin Movement and to mass education, making important contributions to both.

In September 1919, when the National Language Unification Preparatory Committee was founded, he served as a committee member.

Beginning in June 1925, he served as a contributor to the “National Language Weekly”.

From September 3 to October 29, 1926, together with Qian Xuantong, Li Jinxi, Wang Yi, and Bai Dizhou, he completed the word-by-word phonetic review of the “Revised National Pronunciation Dictionary”.

In 1928, the National Language Unification Preparatory Committee was reorganized, and he became a standing committee member. That same year, the Chinese Great Dictionary Compilation Office formally began work, and Xiao Jialin was appointed head of the “People’s Dictionary” section of the Compilation Department.

In 1929, he served as head of the library of Jiangsu Provincial Donghai Normal School.

On September 4, 1929, “Mandarin Romanization Weekly” was launched, with Xiao Jialin as editor-in-chief. The publication ceased in September 1930 due to printing difficulties, having produced 52 issues in total. After resuming publication on June 4, 1932, it initially appeared weekly, and from issue 37 onward became a biweekly.

In July 1930, the “Mandarin Romanization Promotion Association” was founded, chaired by Xiao Jialin. At the time it had only a dozen or so members, including Du Zijin, Wang Fuqing, Wang Yuchuan, and Li Zhonghao. Both the “Mandarin Romanization Weekly” and summer training classes were organized by this association.

In 1931, Xiao Jialin was appointed head of the research section of the Experimental Department at the Shandong Provincial People’s Education Center. In September, at the thirteenth standing committee meeting of the National Language Unification Preparatory Committee, he gave a special report on the Mandarin Romanization training classes.

During his time in Shandong, Xiao Jialin concurrently served as editor-in-chief of the “People’s Weekly” (later renamed “Primary School and Society”), publishing many articles on the Mandarin Movement and mass education there and in the “Shandong People’s Education Monthly”. He personally organized and taught a phonetic-symbol workshop and took part in editing the “Phonetic Shandong Farmer’s Newspaper”, a phonetic-Chinese-character tabloid led at the time by Dong Weichuan and aimed at promoting phonetic symbols and popular education. He also wrote a preface titled “After Organizing Shandong Folklore” for “Shandong Folklore (Volume 1)” (edited and published by the Editorial Section of the Shandong Provincial People’s Education Center) in August 1933.

From September 24 to 26, 1934, Xiao Jialin attended the National Mandarin Romanization Representative Conference held in Jinan, as a delegate from Shandong.

In July 1935, the Ministry of Education’s National Language Promotion Committee was established, and he served successively as committee member and deputy chairman. During the Anti-Japanese War the committee was suspended for a time, but Xiao Jialin continued to publish articles and run national-language training classes in the rear.

On July 26, 1940, the reactivated National Language Promotion Committee expanded and resumed operations. Xiao Jialin attended its second plenary session, held in Chongqing.

In 1944, the Ministry of Education opened a National Language Specialization Program at the National Social Education Institute in Bishan, Chongqing, and Xiao Jialin succeeded He Rong as its second director. Its purpose was “to cultivate high-level national-language teachers, unify the national language, popularize phonetic literacy among the masses, and quickly eliminate illiteracy in society.” Graduates were relatively few and mostly went on to work in the southern mainland and in various provinces and cities in Taiwan, but the program made important contributions to social-education experiments, phonetic-literacy education experiments in Nanjing, and the airborne Chinese-language teaching research conducted by the Institute’s broadcast station.

In April 1946, the Ministry of Education established the Taiwan Province National Language Promotion Committee, on which he served as a committee member, doing a great deal of behind-the-scenes work to support the promotion of the national language in Taiwan.

In 1947, he served as president and publisher of “Guoyu Xiaobao” (“National Language Tabloid”).

In December 1950, Xiao Jialin took a post at the People’s Education Press, concurrently serving on the affairs committee of its Xinhua Lexicography Society, assisting director Wei Jiangong with the day-to-day work of the society and beginning compilation of the radical-arranged “Xinhua Dictionary”. In November 1954, that edition of the “Xinhua Dictionary” was officially published.

On December 1, 1954, the Dictionary Editorial Office (formerly the Xinhua Lexicography Society) was transferred as a whole to the Ancient Books Publishing House under the Publishing Bureau of the Ministry of Culture.

On July 1, 1956, the Dictionary Editorial Office was merged into the Institute of Linguistics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and together with editorial staff of the Chinese Great Dictionary Compilation Office and part of the Institute of Linguistics they formed the Dictionary Editing Office. Xiao Jialin and others became principal compilers of the “Modern Chinese Dictionary”. He subsequently served as an associate researcher at the Institute of Linguistics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (now the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences).

image {: width=”400” }

In the summer of 1957, all staff of the “Modern Chinese Dictionary” Editing Room posed for a group photo in front of the office. In the second row, the first on the right is Wang Shuda, the second on the right is Xiao Jialin, the second on the left is He Meicen; in the third row, the first on the left is Fu Yan, the sixth on the left is He Danjiang, and the seventh on the left is Sun Chongyi.

Main Works and Publications:

“A Study of ‘Lai’ and ‘Qu’” (“National Language Monthly”, 1924)

“Vocational Education and Phonetic Alphabet” (“Xuelin”, 1925)

“Compound-Word Classes as Seen in Rhetoric” (“Xuelin”, 1925)

“A Study of the Difficulties of Educating Workers Over Thirty” (“Xuelin”, 1925)

“My View That China’s Telegraph Should Quickly Switch to the Phonetic Alphabet” (“Xuelin”, 1925)

“Vocational Education and Workers” (“Railway Workers’ Education Ten-Daily”, 1925)

“To the Workers” (“Railway Workers’ Education Ten-Daily”, 1925)

“Vernacular That Goes to the People” (“National Language Weekly”, 1925)

“Phonetic Symbols and Mass Education” (“National Language Weekly”, 1925)

“Mandarin Romanization and Chinese Characters” (“Xinsheng”, 1927)

“Introduction to Mandarin Romanization” (written in Mandarin Romanization), published by the Mandarin Romanization Promotion Association (1931)

“Commemorating Mandarin Romanization” (“People’s Weekly”, 1932)

“The Need for a Dictionary and the Emergence of the ‘People’s Dictionary’” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1932)

“A Study of Retroflex Finals” (“National Language Weekly”, 1932)

“A Review of Research on Graded Vocabulary for Primary Schools” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1933)

“After Organizing Shandong Folklore” (“People’s Weekly”, 1933)

“The Word-as-Unit Movement in Literacy Education” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1933)

“Some Comments After the Full Text of the Reorganization Resolution” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1933)

“Mandarin Romanization and Mass Education” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1933)

“The Language Question in Popular Drama” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1933)

“Using Common Sense to Judge Horizontal versus Vertical Writing” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1933)

“How to Write Compound Words in Connected Form” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1934)

“Methods for Guiding the Continuing Education of Rural Primary-School Teachers” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1934)

“A Critique of Book Classification for People’s Libraries” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1934)

“Several Teachers and Friends Devoted to Script Reform” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1934)

“Can Latinization Really Do Without Tones?” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1934)

“A Critique of the Problem of Mass Language Education” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1934)

“Rules for Writing Compound Words in Connected Form” (“People’s Weekly”, 1934)

“Elegy for Mr. Bai Dizhou” (co-authored with Kong Fanjun, 1934)

“Problems and Prospects of County People’s Education Center Work” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1935)

“The Rural Cooperative Movement Must Foster a United Front of Production and Consumption” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1935)

“Proposal for Joint People’s Education Centers to Trial-Run Mandarin Romanization Promotion Districts” (co-drafted with Dong Huai, “National Language Weekly”, 1935)

“Retrospect and Prospect of the Chinese Character Reform Question” (1935)

“Expansion and Evolution of the People’s Schools” (co-authored with Fan Yuepei, “Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1935)

“The Second Year’s Practices of the Rural Education General Research Society” (“Primary School and Society”, 1935)

“Mandarin Romanization Lectures: Opening Remarks” (“Primary School and Society”, 1935)

“Mandarin Romanization Lectures: Closing Remarks” (“Primary School and Society”, 1935)

“Self-Study and Teaching Combined: Mandarin Romanization Lectures” (“Primary School and Society”, 1935)

“The Question of Syllable Division in GR Compound-Word Connected Writing” (“National Language Weekly”, 1935)

“How We Should Strive from Now On” (“Primary School and Society”, 1935)

“A Letter to Mr. Zhou Jianren on Latinization” (“National Language Weekly”, 1935)

“The Habitual Tactics of the Latinizers and the Shortcomings of Latinization Itself” (“National Language Weekly”, 1935)

“Outline of a Lecture on Book and Newspaper Circulation” (“Minban”, 1936)

“How Mass-Education Workers Should Promote the New Script” (“Shandong People’s Education Monthly”, 1936)

“A Field for the New Script” (“Primary School and Society”, 1936)

“Report on Experiments with the New Script” (“Primary School and Society”, 1936)

“Education Still Cannot Do Without Language and Script” (“Primary School and Society”, 1937)

“On the Question of a ‘Comparative Trial of Mandarin Romanization and the New Latinized Script’” (“Zhenglun [Hankou]”, 1938)

“Education for a Protracted War of Resistance” (“Education Front”, 1939)

“We Should No Longer Engage in Cosmetic Illiteracy Eradication” (“Education Front”, 1939)

“Concrete Methods for Thoroughly Eradicating Illiteracy” (“Education Front”, 1940)

“An Experiment in Using Phonetic Symbols to Aid Reading and Literacy” (“Education Bulletin [Hankou]”, 1940)

“The Fastest and Most Effective Transmission Work” (“Education Bulletin [Hankou]”, 1940)

“Trends in National Language Education” (“Central Daily News”, 1941)

“From the Languages of Border Peoples to Chinese Phonetic Script (correspondence)” (“Yishi Bao [Chongqing]”, 1941)

“Promoting National Language Education and Completing Cultural Construction” (“Education Bulletin [Hankou]”, 1942)

“For the Sake of the Culture of Wounded Veterans” (“Xiedao”, 1943)

“A Proposal That Transliterated Scientific Terms, Place Names, and Personal Names in University and Middle-School Textbooks All Be Set in Phonetic Symbols” (co-authored with Li Jinxi, “National Language Weekly [Nanzheng edition]”, 1943)

“Draft Program for Phonetic Literacy Education” (co-authored with Li Jinxi, “National Language Weekly [Lanzhou edition]”, 1946)

“Draft Interim Measures for Phonetic Literacy Education Demonstration Districts in Each County (City)” (“National Language Weekly [Lanzhou edition]”, 1946)

“Points of Attention Concerning the National Language Portion of Education in Taiwan Province (Appendix 2)” (1947)

“We Should Learn to Use Punctuation Marks Correctly” (“People’s Daily”, 1951)

Collective works:

“Commonly Used Characters of National Sounds”, edited by Qian Xuantong, co-edited by Li Jinxi, Bai Dizhou, and Xiao Jialin, with Zhao Yuanren and Wang Yi as reviewers (1932)

“People’s Dictionary”, edited by Xiao Jialin (July 1932)

“New Rhymes of China”, edited by Wei Jiangong, Li Jinxi, Lu Qian, and Xiao Jialin (1941)

Principal compiler of the “Xinhua Dictionary” (First Edition) (1954)

Principal compiler of the “Modern Chinese Dictionary” (Trial Edition) (1956)

(Special thanks to Xi Bangrong for compiling this bibliography of Mr. Xiao Jialin’s writings.)