Research Projects

My research aims to demonstrate that chuanqi is a multimedia genre in which text, music, and stage are not only co-existing but also interconnected. By integrating analytical approaches from literature studies, book culture, performance studies, and music studies, I seek to explain how dramatic imprints manifested the literary, musical, and staging aspects of the late-Ming chuanqi culture.

The Commercial Press (the Press) is the most prominent book company in promoting modern thought and culture in the May Fourth Era. Echoing the call of the New Culture Movement and the Aesthetic Education Movement, the Press published a number of works to promote fine art, aesthetics, and aesthetic education, bringing different foreign aesthetic thought into modern China.

Present studies on the Aesthetic Education Movement mainly focus on the contribution of Cai Yuanpei蔡元培 and Wang Guowei王國維, especially on their receptions of the aesthetics of Kant, Schopenhauer and Schiller. Besides these prominent names, many books and translation publications that played a role in the dissemination of aesthetic education thought remain underexplored. In our preliminary statistics, at least 27 books and translations, with around 40 lesser-known intellectuals involved, are closely related to the movement. 

Our project aims to reevaluate the contributions and limitations of the Press in the history of modern Chinese aesthetic education, through an integrated discussion on the publishing strategy of the Press in aesthetic education. It attempts to identify the sources of thought, explore the history of thought exchange, and reveal the transcultural network of aesthetic education thought by case studies on selected works and textual analysis.

Key issues of the project include (1) to analyze the contributions of various Chinese intellectuals and translators on the promotion of aesthetic education in The Commercial Press in the May Fourth period, (2) to investigate the transculturality of May Fourth aesthetic education in connection with the philosophy and literature in Europe, Russia, US, and Japan, (3) to explicate the complexity of the discussion in the history of modern Chinese aesthetic education through a transcultural perspective, (4) to reflect on the dynamics and tensions of the Aesthetic Education Movement delivered by The Commercial Press in an era of change.

Keywords

The Commercial Press, Aesthetic Education Movement, Transcultural Studies, May Fourth Culture

Since the 1950s, Hong Kong has been an important field for classical Chinese poetry. Not only are the poets still active, but the universities also strive to make “poetry writing” a compulsory course. Since 1989, three large-scale classical poetry competitions have been launched- the Metrical Poetry Writing Competition (for students), the Chinese Poetry Writing Competition and the Couplets Writing Competition. Related talks hosted by adjudicators have been also arranged annually.

The three competitions have expanded the field of classical writing, raised the society’s interest in classical literature, and contributed a lot to the cultivation of younger local poets. Being pioneers of their kind in Greater China, the competitions are worthy of in-depth study.

This project aims at exploring the promotion and reception of classical Chinese poetry writing in Hong Kong. The emphasis of the research include: 1. how is the classical poetry received in Hong Kong, 2. how is the education of classical poetry carried out in Hong Kong, 3. how have the three competitions been started and operated, 4. how are the three competitions differ from those in the other parts of Greater China, and 5. how are their impacts on Hong Kong and Greater China. The project consists of three parts: 1. Theoretical reflection. The project will make a thorough review of the poetic theory on which the competitions are based, to see the rationality of the rule-making, and to judge the quality of the entries accordingly. 2. Documentation of research materials. To fully understand the details of the competitions, we will compile the winning entries of previous competitions (estimated to be 1,154), select and transcribe some visual records of talks in the past, and interview the organizers, adjudicators and certain contestants. 3. Textual analysis. With the aid of the framework of poetic theory and the interviews, a detailed study of the compiled works will be conducted to see how the culture of classical poetry is passed on in Hong Kong, and how Hong Kong poets revitalize this classical genre with their own creation.

The outcome of the project includes: 1. academic papers to be published in refereed journals, and 2. interviews to be published in literary journals, and 3. a database with searching engine to be produced. This project is groundbreaking among its kind. In terms of the study of reception and promotion of classical poetry in the Sinophone world, this project also has important academic significance.

Wang Niansun (1744–1832) was a representative scholar of the Qian-Jia School during the Qing dynasty. His research on Old Chinese phonology, in addition to collations and interpretations of pre-Qin, Qin and Han ancient texts have been widely acknowledged and applied by scholars to this day. However, most existing studies on Wang Niansun’s scholarship have been limited to his hitherto published works. In the recent decade, we have discovered texts collated by Wang Niansun that remain in manuscript form in various libraries. We have already used these original materials to achieve a fruitful outcome.

On this basis, this project proposes to collate, examine, and publish Wang’s manuscripts preserved in Peking University as soon as possible. Purchased from Luo Zhenyu (1866–1940) by Peking University in the 1930s, the new materials studied in this project consist of 57 volumes in total. It is rare to acquire such a voluminous number of Wang’s manuscripts that remain mostly unpublished, so these materials are of great academic value. This project will compile the copied manuscripts into a book entitled Ziliao huibian (《資料匯編》，A Collection of Materials), and study Wang’s Old Chinese initials system documented therein. By compiling and analyzing Wang’s collations and interpretations of pre-Qin, Qin and Han ancient texts and comparing them with his other works, this study aims to give an authentic view of Wang’s achievement in Old Chinese phonology, semantics, and textual criticism. To facilitate further research on Wang’s studies, these research outputs will be uploaded to the project’s website for easy access.

Kinsei tō’on is a kind of Sino-Japanese reading introduced to Edo (1603-1867) Japan. The rise of kinsei tō’on was closely related to the movement of Ming scholars who traveled East to Japan during the late Ming and early Qing periods, including the interpreters (yakkan), the Ōbaku school of Buddhism, and Tōkō Shin’etsu (1639-1696). While the three sources of tō’on are believed to correspond to Mandarin of the Ming Dynasty with certain dialectal contamination, the root of tō’on’s dialectic reference remains controversial among scholars. Edo-Japanese literature shows evidence of Nanjing or Hangzhou origin, yet even with the aid of preliminary attempts to study the tone values of Ming’s Mandarin, the tone values of tō’on are still untouched. Meanwhile, most scholars paid special attention merely to interpreter-related materials which are most abundant in literature, and pay little attention to the internal difference and complexity of kinsei tō’on.

In order to gain a better understanding of kinsei tō’on, the PI intends to investigate three types of 17th-century musicological materials that happen to speak to the variations of tō’on mentioned above. The three materials are: (1) Gishi Gakufu; (2) Tōkō Kinfu (3) Zenrin Kajyū. The PI attempts to revisit phonological systems of kinsei tō’on as seen in these scores, particularly the nature, expression of voiced consonants and entering tones, and their tone-melody relationships. This is also the first attempt to reconstruct the tone values of tō’on with the aid of musical scores.

It is believed that this project will reinforce the complexity of kinsei tō’on and shed light on its tone values, not to mention a detailed comparison of kinsei tō’on and Ming Mandarin. With the same methodology, similar attempts of reconstructing the tone values of chūsei tō’on (also known as sō’on), which was introduced to Japan during the Kamakura period (1185-1333), will be deemed possible.

Pu-Xian Min (PXM) and Hainan Min (HNM) are intriguing cases from the perspective of language transfer. They descended from a common ancestor, Southern Min, then went their separate ways from the mainstream due to contact with other languages. PXM, spoken in the cities of Putian and Xianyou in eastern coastal Fujian, was heavily influenced by Eastern Min, whereas HNM, the lingua franca of northern, eastern and southern coastal areas of the Hainan Province, has a distinctive imprint from the Kra-Dai languages Ong-Be and Hlai. PXM and HNM are prime examples of what Winford (2005) called ‘borrowing’ and ‘imposition’ respectively. This project investigates the phonological and lexical changes induced by borrowing and imposition through systematic comparisons of PXM and HNM. Our goals are to reconstruct the contact history of these two clusters of Min and to verify contact-induced phonological and lexical changes in them. The project consists of 3 phases. First, PXM and HNM will be reconstructed. The reconstructed forms of the dialects, as opposed to their modern forms, will form the basis of our subsequent analyses. Second, PXM and HNM will be examined in the light of Winford’s (2005) suggestion that changes resulted from imposition are more systematic and predictable than those resulted from borrowing. If the suggestion is valid, phonological and lexical changes will be more systematic and predicable in HNM than PXM. Third, we will investigate whether type of transfer (i.e. borrowing vs imposition) is a factor affecting the borrowability and the borrowability scale of loanwords, as seen in the cases of PXM and HNM. This project will offer new perspectives on the formation and development of Southern Chinese dialects, in which language contact plays an important role.

National identity, defined by individual’s relation to the state, has been a preeminent topic in the studies of late Qing literature. The Travels of Lao Can, a late Qing novel famous for its challenging of traditional bureaucratic values through criticism of local governance, marks a significant change in Chinese intellectuals’ understanding of the individual’s relation to the state. This project will analyze the novel’s discussions on local governance while situating this discourse within the author’s own engagement in flood control in his professional life. This analysis will provide a better understanding of the role that environmental crisis played in late Qing intellectuals’ construction of national identity. 

Previous studies help us to understand the importance of local governance in the novel in addressing the issue of national identity in the late Qing period. However, scholars often neglect the fact that it was deteriorating public security in local society, rather than the way of local governance Liu E criticized, that was Liu E’s main concern. As studies on the 19th century Chinese local history demonstrate, the deterioration of public security in Shandong, where the novel is set, was intimately tied to the frequent catastrophic floods in that era. Nevertheless, scholars tend to neglect such context when discussing the novel’s discourse of local governance, and underestimate the significance of environmental crisis in Liu E’s personal construction of national identity. 

The proposed study aims to contribute to the scholarship in late Qing literature and intellectual history by: (A) understanding personal construction of national identity of late Qing intellectual in ecological context; and (B) shedding new light on studies of political thought in the late Qing by explaining the relation between the mechanism of hydraulic engineering technology and Liu E’s proposal for local governance; and (C) providing a coherent framework to combine the studies of ecological crisis, literary texts, technology, and the writer’s personal life experience. 

This case study on The Travels of Lao Can aims to provide a new way of looking at late Qing intellectuals’ personal construction of national identity. By linking research on everything from river engineering technology to political discourse, the proposed study offers an ecological understanding of Liu E’s conceptions of the relation between individual and the state. It will also help to open a dialogue with literary studies in the context of ecology, science, and politics in general.

Wei Zheng compiled Qunshu Zhiyao (hereinafter referred to as Zhiyao), extracting the text related to governing the country. This book retains the old features of many classics. Zhiyao was introduced to Japan in the late Tang Dynasty, and the important editions we see today are all from the collection of Japan. This project is intended to focus on the following aspects:

First, collect and collate different editions of Zhiyao collected in Japan. Including the earliest Kujō clan edition from the Heian period, Kanesawa-bunko edition from the Kamakura period, and the most readable Suruganokuni edition, and finally the Tenmei edition. Textual research on different editions of Zhiyao collected in Japan, discussing the similarities and differences of different editions, we can know the evolution process of various editions, which is of great help to understand the dissemination and importance of this book.

Secondly, the collection of various editions of Zhiyao in Japan is used to collate the cited books, and the lost books can be compiled. The edition of Japanese collections dates back to a relatively early age. Taking Zhiyao to collate the quoted books can correct many problems of the original books. In addition, Zhiyao also quoted the lost books and articles, so we can use Zhiyao to retrieve the lost documents.

Thirdly, this project will discuss the selected articles of Zhiyao and the ways of governing the country mentioned in the book. Narratological methods can be used. The compiler of Zhiyao used this book as an admonition book to recommend the way of governing the country by selecting articles. Today, we can still manage the enterprise by means of the way of governing the country in Zhiyao.

This project will sort out different editions of Zhiyao collected in Japan, and then explore their inheritance relationship. Next, using the collation and compilation of Zhiyao to make up for the inadequacies in philology. Finally, taking the contents in Zhiyao as an example, analyses the selected articles of Zhiyao from the perspective of narratology.

Specific directions are as follows: 1. Discuss the spread of Zhiyao in Japan and the relationship between different editions of Zhiyao in Japan. 2. Make use of the cited books in the collation of Zhiyao and compile the lost parts. 3. Discuss the attitude of selecting articles in Zhiyao and the application of the way of governing the country in the book today.

The project aims to examine and evaluate a large corpus of emulative ci poems written during the late Qing and early Republican era, focusing on its complex relationship with masterpieces of the Song dynasty and modern culture. It centers at the most discussed and controversial poet, Wu Wenying 吳文英, whom was raised to be one of the four leading poets of Song by Zhou Ji 周濟 and became increasingly important in both the fields of critiques and creative writing. Despite fierce criticisms by leaders of the New Cultural Movement, Wu continued to be the model poet among writers. By analyzing these emulative poems, it is hoped to understand how tradition was drawn upon, transformed, and produced new meanings for modern poets. 

Among Chinese poets, “tradition” is not only honored, but more importantly, gives value to present works. As early as in the Six dynasties, emulative poem (za ni雜擬) became a genre of its own. Ci poetry formed its unique form, subject matter and style in the Song dynasty. Emulation to famous poets, like Su Shi 蘇軾, Li Qingzaho 李清照and Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, started as soon as they finished their works. Wu Wenying, who was previously regarded only as a minor poet, became the canon among late Qing poets. Almost all ci poets in late Qing and after were influenced by Wu in one way or the other. The trend was described as “the fever of Mengchuan” (夢窗熱). In this respect, Wu serves to be the best example in analyzing how ci poets perceived the past works and how they placed their works within the tradition. 

The project approaches these emulative poems in two directions. First, emulation involves a rather complex process in which the poet tries to define his work by empathizing, challenging and altering the past works. The study explores how the modern poet interacts with the masterpieces and make his present works relevant and significant. Second, contextualization of these poems are essential not only for understanding the implied meanings of the poems, but also enabling an evaluation of emulation as a creative writing strategy deliberately deployed to express subtle present experiences. The study reconsiders the importance of these seemingly “conservative” and “unrelated to the real world” ci poems against the background of tradition forms of literature in the modern period.

The outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War caught the immediate attention of a great number of Chinese intellectuals who thus devoted themselves to national salvation. They found the European war literature, especially the Russian-Soviet literature, an important source of inspiration for the Pro-war audience and the ideal nutrition for their own patriotic war-narratives. Previous studies have largely demonstrated the significance of the Chinese Anti-Japanese war literature, mainly written by left-wing writers, and its contribution to the construction of national identity. However, there is little discussion of Chinese modernists’ attachment to the leftist ideology and their contribution to the war-resistance literature. A large portion of Chinese modernists’ criticism and translations of European war literature concerning the Franco-Prussian War, the First World War, the Polish-Soviet War, the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Civil War and the Great Patriotic War in the particular historical context of China has been overlooked, thus making it a missing chapter in the study of both the Chinese Anti-Japanese war literature and the modernist literature. 

This project aims at carrying out research in the Chinese modernists’ reading, criticism, translation and reinterpretation of the European war literature from the transcultural and trans-historical perspective respectively. It will focus on three major Chinese modernist “writers-translators-editors,” namely Shi Zhecun, Ye Lingfeng and Dai Wangshu who introduced and translated over 200 works in the European war literature from five countries and in four languages. By examining their criticism and translations, this project will examine how they reinterpret the war literature written by European writers from different political views, including those of humanists and pacifists (e.g. Romain Rolland), socialists (e.g. Henri Barbusse), anti-fascists (e.g. Heinrich Mann), communists (e.g. Rafael Alberti, Pyotr Pavlenko, Yuri Libedinsky) and fellow-traveler writers (e.g. Vsevolod Ivanov). It will also investigate how they use the translation of the war literature to fulfil their purposes in the anti-Japanese resistance movement in Hong Kong, a movement that struggled to survive under the immense pressure from the pro-Japanese “Peace Movement” and the severe political censorship imposed by the British colonial government.

This project will bring forward an important but long-neglected chapter for the study of the Chinese Anti-Japanese war literature and shed new light on the relation between the study and the European ideological trends. It will extend the research scope to cover the Chinese reception of the European war literature and its literary and political ideas by adding the contribution from modernist writers. It will also deepen our understanding of the transcultural and hybrid nature of the Chinese literary modernity in time of war. 

This project breaks the wall between syntax and phonetics and pioneers a syntax phonetics interface study of sentence-final particles (SFPs, henceforth) in Cantonese. SFPs have been a rather “subtle” but important aspect of Chinese dialectal grammar, which await comprehensive studies. The interface approach adopted in this project commence efforts in this filed. We will put forth a unified research framework for both SFPs and sentence-final intonation, i.e., to link up a syntactic analysis and prosodic feature identification, which should be the two sides of the same coin.

To limit the domain of research into a more manageable size, the scope of our study is restricted to the SFPs in Cantonese interrogatives, which will be put into a pool as the “core” data of this project.

Both the controlled phonetic experiment and the natural speech collection will be conducted in this research project to investigate the prosodic features of SFPs and the interactions between SFPs and sentence-final intonation. In the controlled phonetic experiment, the targeted SFPs are embedded in the sentence stimuli of the designed reading list, and a daily scene as the context will be provided to assist the participants more naturally produce the targeted sentences. In natural speech collection, two methods, “conversation through phone calling” and “face-to-face conversation” will be adopted to elicit daily natural conversations.

In addition to Hong Kong Cantonese, which is our main focus in this project, we would also like to start the first step of cross-dialectal grammar comparison. A smaller sample of participants from Guangzhou will be recruited to take the same set of experiments.

All the audio recordings collected will be compiled to a database of Cantonese SFPs, with careful descriptions of their syntactic and phonological/prosodic properties. A fine grained grammatical analysis will further be proposed to explain the reasons behind the complicated facts.

With combined methods of syntax and phonetics, the interface study in this project will result in a more thorough picture of SFPs. Not only qualitative analyses, but also quantitative analyses will be conducted. A long-term impact of this project can be expected on fine-tuning the knowledge of Chinese grammar and comparative grammar. In addition, the results of this project can be further applied to practical use. The prosody of SFPs is a very important factor to the naturalness of speech. With more prosodic features identified in this project, we can enhance the naturalness of speech synthesis as well as language learning.

Wang Niansun and Wang Yinzhi are both famous Qing scholars known for their studies in ancient Chinese texts. In Dushu zazhi (《讀書雜志》, Miscellaneous Reading Notes) and Jinyi shuwen (《經義述聞》, Accounts on Interpretations of the Classics), these two scholars document their discoveries in explaining the dubious meanings of the classics and in annotating the received interpretations of historical and philosophical texts. Their researches on pre-Qin, Qin and Han ancient texts have been widely acknowledged and used by scholars till this day. However, due to the constraint of research materials, even though scholarly interest in this topic has grown since 2010, little study about the two Wangs’ unpublished works exists. To explore the two Wang’s manuscripts and the critical editions of the ancient titles they studied, this project proposes to collect, study, and publish as soon as possible the newly discovered collated edition of Xunzi (《荀子》) and Jingyi shuwen manuscripts.

Thus far, the large number of new materials studied in this project mostly remain unpublished. Wang Niansun made more than a thousand emendations and notes in Xunzi edition, however, half of the collations are not included in Dushu zazhi. The thirty-four volumes of the Jingyi shuwen manuscripts also include numerous commentaries and corrections by the two Wangs. This project proposes to compile and publish these materials in the form of a book entitled Ziliao huibian (《資料彙編》, A Collection of Materials). Through close-reading and careful analysis, this project contrasts the two Wangs’ manuscripts with their relevant publications. This project is an attempt to investigate the value of Wang Niansun’s works in Xunzi studies, the process of Wang Yinzhi’s production of Jingyi shuwen, the differences between various editions of Jingyi shuwen, as well as the changes of the two Wangs’ elaborations of Confucius Classics. Efforts will also be made to tackle the issue of authorship between the two Wangs in the context of intellectual history. To facilitate further studies on the two Wangs, these outputs will be uploaded to the project’s website for easy access.

Exile to Manchuria in early Qing times—mainly in the second half of the seventeenth century after the Ming-Qing dynastic changeover—is a peculiar historical and political phenomenon whose scale and scope is unprecedented in pre-modern Chinese history. Among the exiles were some very accomplished writers who continued to write in the places of banishment, and their treatment of the trope of exile and exilic experiences in poems and prose writings is worthy of serious study.

This project is conceived as a critical study of the exilic writings of the especially important yet understudied poet Fang Xiaobiao方孝標 (1618-?), who, in the wake of the Examination Scandal of 1657, was exiled with his entire family to Ningguta寧古塔in Heilongjiang, a remote town close to the borders of Chosen Korea. The Fang family spent three years in Ningguta until late 1661 when they bought their freedom with fiscal donations to public works projects. They returned impoverished to China, depended upon the mercy of others and led a miserable life. I wish to look at “the question of exile,” attempt to answer questions about exilic condition, and to explore the poetics and aesthetics of exile. The project is primarily a literary and cultural study.

Source materials of various kinds will be used: collections of poetry and prose writings, historical records, memoirs, journals, etc. Given the fact that the question and condition of exile is prominently foregrounded in Fang Xiaobiao’s Dunzhai shixuan鈍齋詩選, this collection of poetry will be the focus of this study. I will also contextualize Fang Xiaobiao’s writings with those of his co-exiles such as his father Fang Gongqian方拱乾 (1596-1666) and the famous poet Wu Zhaoqian吳兆騫 (1631-1684). It is rewarding to read their poems side by side because many of them were written during the same period of time and were based on shared experiences.

The results of this project will contribute substantially to a long-term research project, “Exile and Early Qing Literature,” that I have been working on. “Exile and Early Qing Literature” is a topic that will significantly enrich our knowledge and understanding of Qing literature and culture, and it also has significance for understanding such modern and contemporary experiences as human dislocation, psychic rupture and traumatic loss.

Xunzi was a key figure of pre-Qin Confucianism, whose scholarship and philosophical thoughts have had an immense influence over generations of the Chinese people. Researchers on his ideas have to rely on his eponymous title, Xunzi; however, the authorship and the year(s) and place(s) of composition of its thirty-two chapters have remained subjects of intense debates. A significant number of parallel passages can be found both among its chapters and with other Han and pre-Han texts. Yet no comprehensive analysis has been carried out on this topic. The present study will target this niche and compile a full listing of all occurrences of similar wordings, passages, and ideas within Xunzi as well as with other transmitted and excavated Han and pre-Han texts, with a view to a thorough investigation of the intratextuality and intertextuality of Xunzi. Based on such data, a computer program will be developed to estimate the year of composition of a text. The phenomenon of parallel passages between Xunzi and other transmitted Han and pre-Han texts far exceeds our existing understanding and calls for an in-depth examination. Relevant excavated texts—such as the Chu bamboo scripts from Guodian and Baoshan, the Shanghai Museum manuscripts, the Shuihudi bamboo manuscripts, the Dingxian Han scripts, and the recently available Chu bamboo scripts from the Warring States period collected by Tsinghua University—will also be covered in the present study.

 The main objectives of the present study are: 1. To analyse the intertextuality and intratextuality of Xunzi; 2. To reassess the date of and the circumstances surrounding the formation of Xunzi as a book and the composition of its individual chapters; 3. To distinguish Xunzi’s core ideas from those developed by his followers; and 4. To revisit the composition and formation process of ancient Chinese texts.

The Confucian classics exerted long-lasting and pivotal influence on literary writing and knowledge acquisition in pre-modern China. The representation as well as interpretation of Confucian canon, however, was flexible throughout history. After the Wanli period of the Ming dynasty, there appeared an exuberant amount of new editions of Confucian Classics featuring pingdian (評點 punctuation and critique) commentary of the original texts. Over 60 titles of pingdian editions of Shijing 詩經, Shangshu 尚書, Liji 禮記, Zhouli 周禮, Zuozhuan 左傳 etc. were published during the late Ming, not to mention the legion of reproductions or recompilations throughout the seventeen-to-eighteenth century. While Chinese intellectual history often neglects such works, Chinese literary history dismisses them as an illustration of “the preference for the examination essay” without conducting any in-depth research. In fact, the pingdian commentaries play an important role in the re-canonization of the pre-Qin classics. The present project takes Sun Kuang 孫鑛 (1543-1613), the most renowned commentators in the late Ming, as the core case, and then treats other literati such as Chen Shen 陳深, Zhong Xing 鍾惺, and Tu Long 屠隆. It aims to reconstruct the system of pingdian criticism through detailed analysis of the technique terms with which the commentators single out the formal features of classical texts. I hope to argue that, while citing ancient texts to exemplify their aesthetic preferences of “antiquarian wonder”, these literati have introduced a new way to read the classics. In addition to textual and literary studies, this project will explore the socio-historical background that nurtured the flourishing of pingdian. Many publishers produced pingdian books with black and vermilion print so as to differentiate the main text from the commentaries. How were the literary commentaries promoted by new printing techniques? In what circumstances were the classical texts repackaged and republished? Was the hierarchy of knowledge undermined when the method of pingdian insinuated itself into the highly varied contexts of novels, dramas, Eight-Legged essays, histories and canons? This research will investigate the interaction between elite culture and mass publication; and discuss how intellectuals, stimulated by literary interest, opened up their vision to a broader epistemological landscape with the help of the publishing industry. This research project aims to integrate the methodologies of literary criticism, social networks analysis and material culture. With such interdisciplinary approach, it will not only deepen our understanding of traditional Chinese literary criticism, but also provide new perspectives for the study of reading culture and intellectual history in late imperial China.

This project aims at comparing the phonological system of Proto-Min (‘PM’), the putative ancestor of all modern Min varieties, with that of Old Chinese (‘OC’), the oldest attested stage of the Chinese language used in the pre-Han period, from a historical perspective. The Min dialect group is well known for keeping a rich layer of pre-Middle Chinese elements, and its relationship with OC is basically unquestioned. Yet, recent advances in linguistic reconstruction have not been fully reflected in existing comparative studies of Min and OC. For example, modifications have been proposed since the PM phonological system was first reconstructed in the 1970s. It will be timely to review and incorporate some of these proposals in an updated PM phonological system. There is a lack of consensus over the number of vocalic nuclei in OC. In this project, we consider PM to be an objective criterion for evaluating OC reconstruction. We will compare the vowel systems of OC (where the main difference of the two camps lies) with that of PM, and examine which OC system is more compatible with PM. This project will be able to settle fundamental debates in the question about whether there are 4 or 6 vocalic nuclei in OC. Unlike previous studies which compare OC and PM, the present research will approach the reconstruction of PM and OC phonological systems without making any presumptions about the two languages’ relationships (‘mother-son’ or ‘sisters’). In addition, this project will draw on new Min data and more robust methods in the comparison of OC and PM. More specifically, we will investigate and suggest interpretations for the OC reflexes of (a) the PM voiceless sonorant initials; (b) the PM ‘softened’ initials; (c) the distinctions between PM ‘close’ and ‘open’ vocalic nuclei; and (d) the PM final *-al. Attention will be paid to the connections between PM and OC dialects such as those spoken in the ancient Qi and Chu regions. This study will deepen our understanding of not only Chinese dialectology, but also Old Chinese reconstruction and historical linguistics.

After World War II, the strategic town for the Chinese-language film industry migrated south from Shanghai to Hong Kong; and the Cold War situation changed the film distribution and production model. Since the 1950s, Singapore and Malaysia had replaced Mainland China as the biggest export market for Hong Kong-produced films. To understand the postwar Chinese-language film industry’s funding cycle, production model, and film genre evolution, one cannot ignore the cultural production networks of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia and the important influence of geopolitics behind the business. This study continues the research in the academic book I will soon publish, Hong Kong Cinema and Singapore: A Cultural Ring between Two Cities. (1950-64), (forthcoming). This study will focus on the early days of the Motion Picture & General Investment Co., Ltd. (MP&GI)—its golden age; from 1955 to 1964, MP&GI produced 152 Mandarin and Cantonese films. The Chairman of MP&GI, Loke Wan Tho, son of the richest man in Singapore and Malaysia, studied history and economics in Europe and had a Western style. In the mid-1950s, Loke imitated the Hollywood studio model by integrating three links—theater, distribution, and production, produced high-quality Chinese-language films in Hong Kong, and distributed to Singapore, Malaysia, North America, and other places. MP&GI, known as the “literati studio,” hired quite a few cultural figures, and MP&GI films were famous for approximating the Hollywood style. Besides Loke’s personal background and European flair, factors of the times and geopolitical changes also dictated MP&GI’s style. In this study, I will continue to explore the effect of the Cold War political environment on the production strategy for MP&GI films, the film genres produced, and the studio’s leading middle-brow filmmaking style. Besides concentrating research on the relationship in film culture between Singapore and Hong Kong, MP&GI’s network would also extend to Taiwan. From a political environment perspective, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia were once British colonies; in terms of official system, the United Kingdom took charge by including Hong Kong and Singapore within the scope of Southeast Asia, and both places had similar political and economic systems. On funding source, MP&GI can be seen as the paragon for early cross-regional Chinese-language cinema. Due to the Cold War situation, MP&GI was incorporated into the “right” and maintained a close relationship with Taiwan. The emphases of this research plan are MP&GI’s regional network and studio style of focusing on wen-yi films and comedies.

The research is intended to provide a comprehensive review of the ‘Hong Kong Literature Archives’ compiled by Lo Wai Luen (Xiao Si) (1939- ), who is acknowledged as ‘the most qualified writer on Hong Kong literary history’. There are two main objectives in the study:

1. Providing a historical survey of ‘Lo Wai Luen’s Hong Kong Literature Archives’; and
2. Analyzing the most recent relations between Hong Kong and China in the context of Hong Kong literary history since the 1920s.

Combining the two perspectives, we shall be able to learn more about the changing understanding of relations between Hong Kong and China in terms of literary history over the last ten decades, including Hong Kong initiatives in advocating an independent cultural identity. The research will focus on literary history and archives, a field where discourse and concrete documents meet, and will have a wide impact on our understanding of the complex relations between Hong Kong and China as well as Hong Kong literature and its sociopolitical contexts. The actual history of Hong Kong, from British colonialism to Chinese imperialism, will also provide a valuable perspective from which to study how literature is manifested in different political situations. Above all, this research demonstrate the advantages of literary history that is based on archival studies and long term interviews with the most accomplished scholar and archivist of Hong Kong literature. It will also assist scholars to understand the actual meanings, impacts, and specificities of literary history, a long overdue task as well as burgeoning academic area of studies in recent years.

In eighteenth-century China, during the Qianlong reign (1736-1795), the emperor dictated the construction of three three-tiered stages and the composition of five “grand plays”. Each play includes a total of 240 scenes set on earth, in Heaven or Hell and divided into 10 long books and took 10 days to perform. Based on popular drama Mulian Rescues His Mother, and fiction Journey to the West, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, The Water Margin, and The Meritorious Book of the Gods, these refashioned grand plays were characterized by what I call “the aesthetics of excess”, which notably deviates from the principle of “zhonghe” or decorum honoured in ancient Han-Chinese tradition. In the last book of the grand play based on The Water Margin for example, Song Jiang is shown suffering from severe punishment in Hell not just once but four times with excessive and realistic detail. In another grand play based on The Three Kingdoms, nine scenes from Scene 216 onwards are unnecessary from classical aesthetic perspective. What meanings did such “excess” have? Did the court’s dramatic aesthetics result from the carefully designed representation of imperial power? How closely were the “grand plays” related to the Qianlong Emperor’s idea of rule and doctrine of loyalty and obedience? In the numerous newly-added episodes of military combats in these plays, can we detect Emperor Qianlong’s insistence on Manchu identity and self-image building? These are some of the issues that scholars of Qing court drama have not yet fully or systematically explored; hence the focal points of my research.

By examining the ritual beginnings and endings, the refashioning of the source materials, the repetition and digression in plot, the supernatural elements in battle scenes, the employment of mannequins and mechanisms for physical torture, as well as the recurring theme of retribution in all of the five “grand plays”, I expect to shed new light on court drama and the politics of culture in the Qianlong era. My findings will in turn deepen our understanding of Qing literature as well as Qianlong’s awareness of political instability and historical change.

Taboo is an ancient custom in China. Taboo became legal tendency and standardization in the lating thousands of years. We easily make mistakes when we use the ancient books without the knowledge of taboo system. Qing Dynasty is a very important period of taboo studies in Chinese history. However, previous scholars always neglected it. In view of this, the present project will survey taboo works in Qing Dynasty. This project will investigate taboo research works in Qing Dynasty from the following aspects:

First, systematize of Zhou Guangye’s 周廣業 Jing shi bi ming hui kao 經史避名彙考. Chen Yuan 陳垣 acclaim that Jing shi bi ming hui kao is the epitomizing work related taboo in Qing Dynasty. However, Chen can’t see Zhou’s work when he wrote his book called Shi hui ju li 史諱舉例. Therefore, it is very important that we should systematize Jing shi bi ming hui kao, so that we can further develop area of research in ancient taboo system.

Second, systematize of Zhou Qu’s 周榘 Nian er shi hui lue 廿二史諱略, Lu Feichi’s 陸費墀 Li dai di wang miao shi nian hui pu 歷代帝王廟謚年諱譜, Liu Xixin’s 劉錫信 Li dai hui ming kao 歷代諱名考, Huang Benji’s 黃本驥 Bi hui lu 避諱錄. These are also important taboo research works in Qing Dynasty before or after Jing shi bi ming hui kao. Focused on these works means that we can know the trend of development among taboo research in Qing Dynasty.

Third, after collecting data form the systematize of taboo research works in Qing Dynasty, new research topics of taboo can be find. For example, “Taboo character of Han Gaozu found in Han Texts”, “Taboo characters of Sui Dynasty found in Tang Texts”, “Taboo characters of Tang Emperors found in Shiji 史記 and Hanshu 漢書”, etc.

Fourth, investigate the relationships between the monographs of taboo research in Qing Dynasty. Examples of research topic, Zhou Guangye’s critics about Nian er shi hui lue, relationship between Jing shi bi ming hui kao and Li dai hui ming kao, achievement of Nian er shi hui lue, Li dai di wang miao shi nian hui pu and Bi hui lu.

In this project, we first prepare a good and systematic version of the monographs of taboo research in Qing Dynasty. Then, use these data for the research of taboo system in ancient China, and discuss the rules of forbidden words. Also, relationships between the monographs of taboo research in Qing Dynasty are concerned.

This research investigates the critics and reception of Chinese Versification Studies in 17th to 19th Japan. The versification of Chinese Poetry, consisting of the binary opposition of the level (ping, 平) and deflected (ze, 仄) tones, has gained prominence in the study of versification. Through the classification (bifurcation) of the four tones and the imposition of tonal rules on couplets, certain prosodic patterns exclusive to the Recent Style 近體 Prosody are thus formed. The prosodic rules of the Old Style Poetry 古詩, on the other hand, are ambiguous and arbitrary, leaving room for further examination for later scholars.

As Classical Chinese is not the mother tongue of Japanese poets and sinologists, they were initially very careful when following the tonal rules established by Chinese poets. Nevertheless, in the 17th century, for phonological and academic reasons, they were more confident in starting their own research on Chinese versification. They criticized the rigidity and inadequacy of versification studies of Chinese scholars, particularly Li Panlong 李攀龍 (1514-1570) who was once the role model of prosodic rules in Japan.

Additionally, previous work has overlooked the uniqueness, complexity and achievements of Chinese Versification Studies as found in the Japanese Corpus. They treated Japanese Corpus as the extension of Chinese Shihua 詩話, without considering the cultural context of Japan. The Japanese poets and sinologists in the 17th -19th centuries have contributed a lot in the realm of Chinese Versification, especially with respect to the discussion of asanren下三連 (the use of three consecutive level tones) and Old Style Poetry Versification.

This research investigates the attitude of Japanese critics towards versification, and reevaluates the research value of Chinese Versification Studies of 17th -19th century Japan and China. The methodology and debate among Japanese scholars of different literary schools are also key issues. By investigating the Shihua and other relevant literature, this research will examine how the prosodic rules (especially Old Style Prosody) were discovered and theorized in Japan.

This research will provide a solid foundation for reinterpreting the history of Chinese Versification, particularly with respect to how the Japanese responded to Li Panlong, Wang Shizhen 王士禎, Shen Deqian 沈德潛 and Weng Fanggang 翁方綱. The research output will provide students and amateurs comprehensive and comprehensible guidelines on the versification of Old Style Poetry.

This project is a study of the narrative poems in “song form” (gexingti 歌行體) by the celebrated poet Wu Weiye 吳偉業 (1609-1671) of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition. Wu’s poetry has been substantially studied, but revisiting Wu’s narrative poems from the perspectives of literary culture and cultural history promises to shed innovative light on Wu’s long-lasting literary legacy. I will explore Wu’s poems along the themes of Garden, History and Love.

Famous gardens in Ming-Qing times were both private and public spaces, infused with individual, cultural and historical memories. Wu’s poems “Pipa xing” 琵琶行, “Hou Donggaocaotang ge” 後東皋草堂歌, and “Yong Zhuozhengyuan shanchahua” 詠拙政園山茶花 concern the gardens of Wang Shimin 王時敏, Chen Zhilin 陳之遴, and Qu Shisi 瞿式耜. Wu, Wang, Chen and Qu were Jingnan natives, good friends, and Ming officials. After the fall of the Ming, both Wu and Wang lived as recluses, Qu embraced martyrdom defending the fugitive Ming court, and Chen served the Qing court. I will discuss how these gardens, as a form of material culture, mirrored the lives of their owners.

Wu’s “Yuanyuan qu” 圓圓曲 and “Songshan ai” 松山哀 about Wu Sangui 吳三桂 and Hong Chengchou 洪承疇 will be discussed along the theme of History. Wu and Hong were positioned in Manchuria to resist the Qing invasion. They deflected to the Qing after tragic battles and massacres. Understandably, Chinese historians have passed harsh judgement on them, and literary critics followed suit. I beg to differ. I shall argue that besides criticism, Wu was sympathetic to them—he rooted ethics in human condition.

The love story between Wu and the courtesan Bian Yujing 卡玉京 is engaging. Wu declined the proposal of marriage by Bian in late Ming. Their romance, nevertheless, continued. Focusing on “Ting nǚdaoshi Bian Yujing tanqin qu” 聽女道士卞玉京彈琴曲 and a series of texts by Wu on Bian, I will discuss how they intimate Bian’s change in emotion and physiological constraints over time. More importantly, I will explore Wu’s senses of identity, power, desire, taste, gender, positioning, and subjectivity. His roles as lover, the ungrateful, the heart-broken, confessor, oral history chronicler/versifier, and reminiscent will also be fully discussed.

Wénbái yìdú is the phenomenon where a single Chinese character contains two or more readings: a ‘colloquial reading’ commonly used in vernacular speech and a ‘literary reading’ commonly used in literary or formal registers. Many studies have so far been conducted on wénbái yìdú from phonological and lexical perspectives. This project, however, argues that an innovative morphological perspective on wénbái yìdú will offer great insights into word formation and morphological stratification, and open a new and important avenue for examining the historical development in Chinese dialects. We will collect samples of wénbái yìdú in Southern Mǐn through fieldwork in Xiàmén and Shàntóu. Southern Mǐn is chosen because the dialect offers a rich dataset for examining morphological stratification. There is an estimated 1,500 characters with wénbái yìdú. For example, 老 ‘old’ in Southern Mǐn has a colloquial reading lau7, a semi-literary reading lau2, and a literary reading lo2. Sociolinguistic methods will be employed to elicit data from 120 native speakers (60 from each location). The analysis will focus on synchronic variations in compound word formation between the two Southern Mǐn varieties with the aim of discovering any irregularities in morphological stratification across the dialect group, which will bring new perspectives on language change. Finally, this project will also address the role of Chinese characters in morphological stratification.

This research project is an analysis of a large body of ci 詞 poetry written during the late Qing period (1840-1911), focusing on the transformation of the practice of cishi 詞史. It argues that the concept and practice of cishi have initiated reflections among poets on the style of ci poetry and changed their form of expression. Understanding the transitional changes of works in this period will help us to reconsider the common impression that late Qing ci poetry is “conservative”, “obscure” and “unrelated to the real world”.

There are two objectives of the study. First of these is to define the nature of cishi poetry (ci that reflects or relates to historic events known to or experienced by poets). I will research into different forms of expression and outline a gradual and subtle change in writing practices. The second objective is to explain how the change is related to the “stubbornly traditional” image of ci towards the end of Qing and early Republican era.

Reaching its pinnacle in the Song dynasty, ci has formed a unique tradition in form, styles, subject matter and language. It is commonly believed that ci is more suitable for expressing personal feelings than narrating events or casting satire. Despite being an independent genre, ideas from shi 詩 poetics have been continuously introduced in order to elevate the status of ci. The notion cishi comes from shishi 詩史, and gained great popularity among the ci poets who experienced the upheavals of late Qing, and felt the need to record current events and voice out their social and political concerns through ci. The term cishi recurs often in the commentary of contemporary critics of the poets.

The introduction of cishi to both the theory and practice of ci confronted the poets with the lyrical tradition of ci and the narrative nature of recording shi 史. This research illustrates the tensions between narrative and lyrical, arising both in the discussion of poetics and associated writing practices. By re-evaluating the nature of ci and cishi, poets gradually “return” to a more traditional lyric mode of expression. They are, however, not acted upon by the tradition, but create something new by recapturing the old. The project will review and explain this change in an attempt to shed new light on the nature and development of late Qing ci poetry.

The aim of this project is to conduct research into the supplements of the Hong Kong Lih Pao (HKLP) in the period between 1938 and 1941.

After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937, many of the major Chinese cities fell in succession into the hands of the Japanese, and an enormous number of migrants fled to the South of China. Great Britain’s neutral policy during the War allowed Hong Kong to become a safe haven for political propaganda, catalyzing the expansion of the news media and the subsequent flourishing of literatary endeavor.

The HKLP was one of the newspapers which was newly established in these circumstances. It was led by the Southbound literati from Mainland who inherited the spirit of the Lih Pao of Shanghai. Between 1938 and 1941, numerous fictions, essays and translated works were published in it. The supplements of the HKLP are generally considered by scholars to be the mouthpiece of a single political group, and therefore the different voices in the supplements were downplayed.

This project will attempt to depict and relocate the different forces in these three supplements. By analyzing the various texts, especially regarding their inconsonance, the research will examine how different forces confront, negotiate and cooperate in the process of literary production, and it will identify the distinguishing features of Hong Kong literature in relation to its production mechanism.

This project aims to introduce a new dimension on the research of Hong Kong Literature. Through studying the production mechanism of literature, the features of Hong Kong Literature can be revealed. It may be seen as a breakthrough to the previous researches, which constantly argue on the subjectivity of the author, whether he/she possesses the ‘consciousness of Hong Kong’ or the ‘Hong Kong identity’ becomes a determine factor for Hong Kong Literature. Moreover, this project will also explore on the diversity of literary practices and achievements of Southbound literati, so as to change the apparently unitary impression of Hong Kong Literature in the academic field.

This project aims at carrying out research into the Chinese modernists’ reception of the French leftist intellectuals in the 1930s and 1940s. The Chinese modernists’ reception of the Western aesthetic modernism and their contribution to the construction of Chinese modernity have been convincingly argued by scholars in the last three decades. (Lee Ou-fan 1980, 1990, 1999; Shih Shu-mei 1997; Peng Hsiao-yen 2010) On the other hand, discussions on their attachment to the leftist ideologies in China and in Europe have been very limited. It was not until the 1990s that scholars have re-examined the reciprocal influences between the Chinese modernist and leftist literature (Zhang Tongdao 1997; Liu Jianmei 2003; Li Hongwa 2012). A large corpus of Chinese modernists’ writings and translations related to the Leftist intellectuals in Europe, especially in France, has been overlooked, making it a missing chapter in the study of Chinese modernist literature.

The Chinese modernists, deeply inspired by views of the French leftist intellectuals on aesthetics and politics, re-examined their own position on the controversial issues stemming from literature’s role in politics during the politicization of Chinese literary community, during the periods of the League of Left-wing Writers (1930-1936) and Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). The project will focus on three major Chinese modernist “writers-translators-editors,” namely Shi Zhecun, Dai Wangshu and Ye Lingfeng. They translated over 80 titles of literary and political writings by Romain Rolland, André Gide, Henri Barbusse, Paul Vaillant-Couturier, Louis Aragon and André Malraux. Under their editorship, the literary journals and supplements have also published translations of articles from French leftist newspapers and literary reviews including the Humanité, the Commune, the Feuille rouge, and the Monde. By examining their criticism, translations and editorial activities, the project will investigate the Chinese modernists’ reconstruction of French leftist intellectuals’ political-literary figures as well as their re-interpretation of French leftist literature in a Chinese historical context.

The project seeks to contribute to academic studies in three ways. First, it will bring forward an important but long-neglected chapter to the study of Chinese modernist literature and shed new light on the association between this study and French leftist trends. This will deepen our understanding of the transcultural and hybrid nature of Chinese literary modernity. Second, it will break new ground in the study of Twentieth-century Chinese and French comparative literature, as previous studies have been largely focused on Chinese modernists’ attachment to French Symbolism and Modernism. Lastly, as Chinese Left-wing writers were mostly influenced by the Russian and Japanese proletarian movements, the project will extend the research scope of Chinese reception of leftist ideologies and literature by including the contribution from modernist writers.

本研究旨在探討《當代文藝》在形塑香港以及東南亞華語語系文學方面所作的貢獻。

Current Literature is a literary monthly founded in Hong Kong by Xu Su (1924－1981) in 1965. It was one of the most popular middle-brow literary journals of Hong Kong in the second half of the twentieth century.

Driven by Xu Su’s passion to promote literature among general readers, this journal has succeeded, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s, not only in nurturing aspiring writers locally and abroad, but also in creating a vibrant Sinophone literary community outside of China. Regular and frequent contributors to this journal came from three areas in Asia: the colonial cities of Hong Kong and Macao; the tropical region comprising Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia; and the politically unstable Indochinese countries such as Vietnam and Laos. Other contributors, less in number by comparison, were from Taiwan, Thailand, Burma, Europe and North America.

This research will look into the historical role played by Current Literature in shaping Sinophone literatures of Hong Kong and Southeast Asia in the second half of twentieth century, explicate the characteristics and concerns of various Sinophone writings, and assess the literary achievements of notable writers who have contributed significantly to the success of the journal and the emergence of Sinophone literatures.

This proposal implores the reception of the traditional canon Chu Ci in the context of secularization in late Ming period (ca.1500-1644), with the focus on the works of Chu Ci studies of the Ming dynasty.

In early Ming period when the imperial power was expanding and Neo-Confucianism was prevalent, Qu Yuan (ca.343-ca.277B.C.) and his works were criticized, and therefore the study of Chu Ci was in a low key, with the only exception of Zhu Xi’s(1130-1200) Chu Ci Jizhu 楚辭集註 (Collected Commentary on Chu Ci). That is because Zhu Xi’s approach was seen as the orthodox Confucian perspective and hence the unchallengeable status of his commentary. After the Mid-Ming times, a great change occurred in the academic trend, a surge of new studies on Chu Ci was initiated. Up to the end of the dynasty, nearly 80 works of Chu Ci studies were published, and more than 50 of them are extant today. These works demonstrate several unique characteristics of the reception of Chu Ci in late Ming. 1) The revealing of the political circumstances: scholars like Zhao Nanxing, He Qiaoyuan and Huang Wenhuan would like to express their political views through making exegesis of Chu Ci. 2) The expression of geo-cultural factors: most of the authors of works of Chu Ci studies were from the regions along the Yangtze Valley. This can be explained by the cultural sympathy of Chu Ci, geographical, economic and publication situations. 3) The trend of ‘‘qing’’情 and ‘‘qu’’趣 : the popularity of the School of Mind provoked the society’s mind of individualism, and the authors and commentators of Chu Ci did not regard Zhu Xi’s ideas as the only method to interpret Qu Yuan and his works. Authors such as Sang Yue or Lu Shiyong were rather interested in the factors of emotions and entertainment in the works. 4) The preference of erudition and exoticism: this trend, which started in Jiangsu and later became more popular in late Ming, can be concluded in two parts: the first was textual criticism and the second was the interest in materials of myths. Examples of Chu Ci studies include Tian Wen Bu Zhu of Wang Zhonghong and Li Sao Cao Mu Shi of Zhou Gongchen. The study of these characteristics, which confirm the tendency of secularization of canons in late Ming, is the main body of this project.

This project is designed in two stages: at the first stage we are going to collect in China, Taiwan and Japan the research materials which are not yet seen. Though they only constitute a small part of the materials, most of them are the only copy extant. At the second stage we will start the examination and study of the materials collected. We hope that this project can deepen our knowledge in the studies of literature, philosophy, textual criticism and mythology in the Ming dynasty.

本課題在區分科學技術與科學思想的前提下，認為形式科學（如公理假設、推演定理等）是西方以伽利略為代表的近代科學的基礎，一百五十年後的乾嘉學派也蘊含著形式科學的要素。本課題以段玉裁《說文解字注》、王念孫《廣雅疏證》為研究物件，發掘乾嘉學者治學中的科學理念和科學方法。前代學者如梁啟超、胡適、章太炎等曾提及中國傳統學術樸學中孕育著科學的要素。然而，什麼是中國傳統學術中所蘊含的深層的、可供繼承發展的科學要素呢？這個問題尚未得到學術界的重視和研究。

我們認為科學的原理在公理設定、定理推演以及演繹和實驗，其結論形式為「理必」，而乾嘉學者劃時代的發明與貢獻，正是其「理必之學」，這是中國傳統學術走向當代科學的起始之步，也是中華學術科學發展過程中趨向理性方法和公理化思想的萌芽，本課題擬對段玉裁《說文解字注》、王念孫《廣雅疏證》中的科學理念和方法進行系統研究，選題依據陳述如下。

乾嘉學派的語文學是語言學的分支。語言研究是否具備「科學」的屬性？著名語言學家霍凱特（Hockett）曾提出語言學不是科學，至少還沒有發展成為科學。很多傳統語言學家持此看法。然而喬姆斯基《句法結構》嘗試在科學理論框架之下建立一個科學的理論體系，把語言系統構建為一個嚴格的、可推演的、具有科學屬性的公理系統。著名句法學家Richard K. Larson的著作Grammar as science把「科學」直接作為書名。這些都說明語言學具有科學性。

《漢語口語語法》出版的同年（1968）趙元任先生發表了他的第一部漢語書面語教材：Sayable Chinese《中國話的讀物》。在該教材的前言中他指出：「漢語的白話書面語絕大部分是用報刊風格(journalistic style)寫成的有關社會科學內容的文章」，然而這些「書面白話(written bairhuah)不是『可說的』(sayable)自然語言」，因此「一些（美國）學生中文口語說得很好，但他們說出一個漂亮句子後，接下的一句就徑用胡適或魯迅一類作家自己不說、也根本不想用在口頭的句子」。五十年前趙元任指出的這種現象，今天還在。這就是漢語教學中口語和書面語之間的不同與衝突。

這種語體的衝突向我們提出挑戰：書面語的性質是什麼？「可說的」書面語和「口語」有何不同？如何避免二語習得中的語體衝突？我們認為，這些問題可以通過「語體語法」的理論來回答和解決。

語體語法是近年來發展出來的一個新領域。以前，人們看到了口語和書面語的不同，認為「書面的」不是嘴上能說的，只是作者的文字藝術或語言修辭。但事實上，正如趙元任所編的「Sayable Chinese」中所說，書面語是不同於口語的一種「可說的」正式體漢語。我們知道，人們的語言交際需要「什麼時候說什麼話」，但大多數人把因人、因地、因事所說的不同的話，只當做語言使用的藝術和技巧，沒有注意到它們的語法屬性。事實上，人們在語言交際中怎麼說，不僅要看物件（如跟父母、朋友、領導、外賓等的不同）、要看場合（如家裡、單位裡、大會上等）、還要看所談的內容（如日常生活、政治經濟、學術觀點等）的不同。這些交際物件、場景和內容的不同決定著交際時所用的詞彙和語法的不同。因此，所謂的「書面語」不是不能說，而是在特定場合才說的正式體或莊典體。譬如「購買」，人們只在正式場合才使用，口語說「買」；「買書」和「購買圖書」都可以說，都是漢語需要的表達形式。然而，在口語裡“昨天他買和看了一本書「不合漢語語法，因為兩個動詞不能用「和」來連接。但是如果把口語的「買」和「看」換成正式說法的「購買」和「閱讀」的話，不合法的句子馬上就合法了。比較（帶「*」號的句子不合法）：
*他昨天買和看了一本書
他昨天購買和閱讀了一部古典小說。
可見，人們說話轉換語體時，不僅改變詞彙，而且使用不同、甚至矛盾的語法格式。換言之，語體的不同，直接關係到句子的合法與否。問題之大，是以前所沒想到的。顯然，這在漢語語言學與漢語二語教學裡，不僅是一個新現象，而且是一個非常重要的新課題。

這種現象的重要性直接關係到二語習得。我們常常聽到外國學生抱怨：“Why is Chinese so damn hard?”　其中原因固然很多，但重要的一個就是「語體語法」的困惑。趙元任說他的美國學生雖然中文口語很好，但一句口語後，接著就是書面語的句子，其不倫不類的原因，就在於此。顯然，莊典禮服不適於隨便的場合，而室內便服也不能用於接見外賓。如果說漢語「語體不同則語法亦異」，那麼混淆不同語體的表達不僅「語不得體」，更會導致「語法錯誤」。這種現實不僅讓學中文的外國學生感到困惑，就連我們的中文教師也常常對此束手無策。

語體和語法直接相關的現實，要求我們對不同語體的不同形式必須有一個清楚的區分和總體的估價：什麼是口語語體詞語？什麼是正式體詞語？正式體詞語到底有哪些？等等。當然，有人可能會問：漢語正式與非正式的語體區別，果真如此之大嗎？僅據我們的初步統計，漢語常用正式體雙音節詞彙有近500個（如「加以、進行、從事」等），嵌偶單音詞高達300餘個（如「遍訪、遍查」的「遍」），正式和莊典體的句型有近300個（如「為…所…」等）。毫無疑問，對漢語的二語習得而言，這個數字並不小；更何況這些標誌語體特徵的表達形式不是可有可無，而是漢語語體表達和構成的必要和必需的成分。因此漢語教學的一個重要內容就是把這些帶有語體特徵的用語，根據不同物件、場合、和內容的需要，清清楚楚地教授給學生。唯其如此，我們才有可能把他們從中文“難學”的抱怨和困境中解放出來。一言以蔽之，漢語語體語法的研究不僅是漢語本身，而且是漢語二語教學實踐上的一個迫在眉睫的重要課題。

語體語法的研究雖然加深了我們對書面正式語體的認識，然而什麼是「語體」？語體的根本屬性什麼？如何鑒定語言中的不同語體？表達同一語體的詞、語和句型，究竟有哪些、有多少？哪些詞彙和句法是中性的？哪些是「語體異化」形式？凡此種種，都是目前語言學和對外漢語教學中面臨的新課題。

為有效地回答和解決這些問題，我們需從具體而實際的環節入手，設定一個切實可行的操作步驟，一步一步地有計劃地完成和解決。這就是本專案所要解決的問題。

The proposed research provides a pioneering study of the ‘June Fourth discourse’ in Hong Kong exemplified in literary works by writers and students. There are two main objectives:
1. Providing a comprehensive survey on literary works published in Hong Kong within the one year period of June 1989 to June 1990 with respect to the national identity discourse; and
2. Analyzing the ‘June Fourth representations’ in literature in the last 25 years after the incident by case studies of the Hong Kong writer Wong Bik Wan黃碧雲 (1961—); the youth writers’ magazine Fleurs Des Lettres字花 (2006—); and poetry anthologies in the　name of June Fourth.

Combining the two perspectives, we shall able to learn more about the changing representations of the Tiananmen Incident of 1989 in the last quarter of century, as well as Hong Kong’s initiatives on the incident, a subject where political reality and individual identity crisis meet, I believe this research will have a wide impact on our understanding of the complex relations between contemporary literature and politics as well as literature and social commitment. The actual vibrant society of Hong Kong has passed from pre-retrocession to post-retrocession, also offering us a new angle to study how literature manifests in different political status. This research will also provide unique case studies to understand the actual meanings, impacts, and ideological discourse reflected in the nuance of literary representations, which has become the burgeoning academic concerns in Hong Kong identity and the region’s relation with China.

Despite their preeminence as semanticists and textual critics whose scholarship is still relevant to this day, the Qing scholar Wang Niansun and his son Wang Yinzhi have been little studied outside the contexts of their hitherto published works, namely Guangya shuzheng (《廣雅疏證》), Dushu zazhi (《讀書雜志》), Jingyi shuwen (《經義述聞》) and Jingzhuan shici (《經傳釋詞》). This is largely due to the lack of research materials. The problem has been partly addressed with the study of Wang Niansun’s critical editions of eight ancient titles under the “Research Project on the Newly-discovered Ancient Texts Collated by Wang Niansun” that commenced in 2010. To further expand this corpus of raw materials, this two-year project is proposed to collate and study another fourteen works by the two scholars, eight of which are currently in the form of manuscripts or copies housed in libraries in Mainland China and Taiwan and the other six are newly discovered critical editions of ancient titles.

Mostly unpublished previously, these fourteen titles will be compiled into Wang Niansun Wang Yinzhi gaoben chaoben jiaoben ziliao huibian (《王念孫、王引之稿本、抄本、校本資料彙編》A Compendium of Manuscripts, Copies and Critical Editions by Wang Niansun and Wang Yinzhi) to provide otherwise unavailable materials for further research on the two Wangs’ contribution to phonology, semantics, textual criticism and annotation. Other research efforts will include a comparative study of the two scholars’ published works, reconstruction of Wang Niansun’s re-categorization of ancient sounds and rhymes, reconstruction of Wang Yinzhi’s production of juan 10 to Guangya shuzheng (《廣雅疏證》), and the pair’s textual criticism of Zhou li (《周禮》), Jiaoshi yilin (《焦氏易林》), Shuowen jiezi tongshi (《說文解字通釋》), Sunzi zhu(《孫子注》) , Chuci (《楚辭》) and Beitang shuchao(《北堂書鈔》). Attempts will also be made to compare and contrast the two scholars’ scholarly pursuits and to tackle the issue of authorship between them in the context of academic history. To facilitate further studies on the two Wangs, these outputs will be progressively uploaded to the project’s website for easy access.

Yan Shigu 顏師古is a historian and master of Confucian Classics (jing經) in the period of late Sui dynasty and early Tang dynasty. However, his achievements of Confucian Classics was always neglected by previous scholars. In view of this, the present project will survey Yan Shigu’s works, i.e. Commentaries of Hanshu漢書注, Kuangmiuzhengsu匡謬正俗 and Ji Jiu Pian Zhu急就篇注, in order to study his achievements of Confucian Classics in Tang dynasty:

First, investigate the quotations that Yan Shigu cited from the Classics and its commentaries in his commentaries on the Hanshu. Ban Gu, the historian who compiled the Hanshu, was a scholar of the Han dynasty steeped in the classical studies. Yan Shigu followed Ban’s practice of citing the Classics in his writings. Yan’s quotations fall into two general categories: (1) his interpretation of Hanshu’s quotations from the Classics, and (2) his own quotations from the Classics to explain texts in the Hanshu. The study of Yan’s quotations is also a way to discover the other explanation of the Classics.

Second, since Yan Shigu was the grandson of Yan Zhitui顏之推, author of the Yanshi jiaxun顏氏家訓, and nephew of Yan Youqin顏遊秦, author of the Hanshu queyi漢書抉疑, it is only natural that his family had a profound influence on his works. A comparison between Yan Shigu and his ancestors will be done in this project. The development of the commentaries of Classics from Six dynasty to Tang dynasty will also discuss.

Third, the role of Yan Shigu in the edit of the Wujingzhengyi五經正義. This project will discuss the difference between Yan Shigu’s works and Wujingzhengyi in the commentaries of the Classics.

Fourth, Lu Deming陸德明’s Jingdianshiwen經典釋文 is a phonetic explanation monograph annotating, by phonetic notation, 14 classic works in pre-Qin dynasty. This project will investigate different explanation of the Classics between Lu Deming and Yan Shigu.

Fifth, Kuangmiuzhengsu reflects the Mainstream Characters Concept 正字學of Yan Shigu. This project will also study the character concept of Yan Shigu from his works, such as Wujing Dingben五經定本, Yanshiziyang顏氏字樣, and also the Commentaries of Hanshu.

Finally, compares the same chapters or passages found in the Commentaries of Hanshu, the Three Commentaries on the Shiji史記三家注, Li Shan’s commentary on the Wenxuan文選李善注, so to discuss the citations of the Classics and its commentaries within these works.

The study of ancient texts can be conducted from many angles, one of them being alternative characters. Alternative characters might appear under three conditions: 1) different versions of the same book; 2) multiple sources recording the same matter or event; 3) citations and the texts from which they are cited. This last condition can be further divided into three cases: 1. general citations and the cited; 2. annotations and the text being annotated; 3. leishu (encyclopaedia), excerpts from books, and their original sources. Since characters used in a text are closely linked to their meaning, past scholars would expend great effort in collating and identifying the alternative characters in an ancient text, in the hope of reconstructing its original shape. Great achievements have come out of this type of studies but few have explored the relationship between annotations and alternative characters in ancient texts.
The proposed study aims to examine the annotations by Han and Tang scholars, such as Maogong 毛公, Zheng Xuan 鄭玄, Gao You 高誘, Wang Su 王肅, Wei Zhao 韋昭, Guo Xiang 郭象, Cheng Xuanying 成玄英, and Yang Jing 楊倞. Together with relevant excavated texts and other references, the project will compare the alternative characters in ancient texts with their corresponding annotations, in order to analyse the relationship between annotations and alternative characters and offer an in-depth view into how scholars since the Han dynasty had made use of alternative characters for their annotations of ancient texts. An “Alternative Characters in Han and Pre-Han Texts Database” and an “Annotations of Han and Pre-Han Texts Database” will first be set up under the CHANT database system. The two databases will then be collated electronically to display instances of the similarities and differences between the alternative characters and annotations. Analyses will be made on the ways annotators used alternative characters in their annotation of ancient texts. The materials and findings will be compiled and published as reference volumes of alternative characters and annotations of the Han and pre-Han texts, while the two Databases will be made available for researchers’ access.

Popular poetics refers to books of poetic rules and forms given to beginners, explaining poetry’s rules and ways, as well as collections given them to imitate through repeated recitation of poetry. These works were not valued by the cultural elites, but were very widely circulated, to enormous effect. These popular readers were what established mass poetic common sense, defined a popularized poetic canon, cultivated common tastes in the masses, and formed a common cultural mentality. They were a part of social and folk cultural dentity. This projectintends to research Ming dynasty popular poetic readers, primarily including the following goals:(1) Survey and collect relevant material, and investigate the authors of these documents, alongwith their authenticity and origins. (2) Research processes of composition, publication andtransmission of these popular readers, investigating the interaction between cultural andcommercial factors. (3) Research their theoretical content and value. (4) Investigate how theywere related to education in poetics. (5) Explore the cultural meanings of these readers.Researching Ming dynasty popular poetics makes a significant contribution to understanding theoverall system of Ming dynasty poetic culture. It makes very helpful enhancements of ourunderstanding Ming dynasty folk poetic education, and of the relation between commercialpublishing and academic culture. It further contributes some perspective on handling analogouscontemporary problems.

Influenced by the latest aesthetic trends from the West, Chinese modernist literature, however, found itself nurtured in the Sino-Japanese War. The works of Dai Wangshu, a prominent modernist poet and translator of the time, provide us with an opportunity to look into the complexities of modernist practice in China. Most scholars prefer to emphasize Dai’s attachment to Western modernism and therefore confine their attention to his publications in Shanghai. This proposed project aims at carrying out extensive research into the body of work published during his exile in Hong Kong (1938-1949). Based on hitherto-neglected source materials, it will examine central issues concerning his views on poetry, his foreign influences and his reflection on the role literature in wartime politics.

More specifically, the project will address the following key questions: 1. How did Dai Wangshu perceive “war literature” during the Sino-Japanese War? With reference to the European war literature he introduced to Hong Kong, how did he deal with the contradiction between pure aesthetics and ideological commitment in his writing and translation of war literature? 2. Why did Dai emphasize the poetic qualities of fiction he translated during wartime? How does this help us better understand his theory of poetry? 3. How did Dai develop his own interest in Russian literature under the influence of French leftist intellectuals? In what way did his perspective on Russian literature in Hong Kong differ from that in Shanghai?

Through an intertextual analysis of Dai Wangshu’s works of translation, literary criticism and cultural criticism, the project will give weight to the historical environment in which his works appeared and to the cultural and ideological implications of his translations. Treating Dai as a wartime Chinese modernist, the project will extend the study scope of Chinese modernist writers by covering their works published in Hong Kong. It will also testify to the importance of Hong Kong in the development of Chinese modernist literature.

Research on Dai Wangshu has been hampered by the relative inaccessibility of his Hong Kong output. During the course of the project, a large corpus of Dai’s undeservedly obscure work will be published and a searchable database relating to his oeuvre will be made freely available for the general public and the interested researcher thereby making a significant contribution to the field of study as well as to facilitate future work in comparative literary studies and translation studies.

「中國三十年代現代派作家翻譯資料庫」http://www.transchimodern.hk

本計畫旨在探討清代古典戲曲中明史書寫的創作背景、藝術、思想特色，以及社會、政治意涵。

The Qing dynasty (1644-1911) saw a tremendous burst of intellectual energy and creativity that led to a marked growth in historical drama as well as historiography. Among more than 3000 recorded plays composed in the Qing, approximately one third are history plays, and over 200 deal with Ming (1368-1644) history, which include great works of art. Under what circumstances were the events and figures of the preceding dynasty or their literary representations recalled and reshaped? To what extent was historical drama created during the Qing different from that of previous dynasties? Is it true that re-enacting events of the past helps a group “commemorate collectively” and the shared experience creates “a feeling of identity, binding the participants together and excluding outsiders”? (Grant and Ravelhofer 2008, 5) What factors came into play in the dramatic representations of Ming history in Qing China? To what extent were the writing and use of Ming history in drama different from the official history, and also different from early Qing to mid-Qing and to late Qing? What impact did these history plays have on people’s perception of the Ming and its relation to their present time? By examining the entire corpus of the 170 or so extant play-texts within their social, cultural, and historical contexts, I wish to portray the diversity and inter-textuality of the Qing world of historical drama, in order to shed new light on the creative processes, aesthetic and philosophical characteristics, as well as the socio-political relevance of classical drama in late imperial China.

Besides furthering drama research, another aim of my proposed investigation is to broaden the scope of traditional historical study by exploring the “emotional” history of the Qing people, for in drama, social energy, collective beliefs and experiences are often encoded. The fact that quite a number of excerpts from Qing historical plays still grace the Kun opera stage bears witness to their artistic value and emotional appeal. Last but not least, when the project is completed, contemporary playwrights may gain insights from my theoretical reflections on the evocative force and emotional structure of the best kind of drama ever written on human history.

Wang Niansun(1744-1832) was a Qing scholar distinguished for his studies in textual criticism and semantics, whose researches on pre-Qin, Qin and Han ancient texts have been widely acknowledged and applied by scholars to this day. Present research into the great scholar’s studies has been hampered, however, since such valuable materials can be accessed only by gleaning through Guangya shuzheng (《廣雅疏證》) and Dushu Zazhi (《讀書雜志》). To address the problem, this project aims to collect, compile and study the eight ancient texts Fangyan (《方言》), Guangya (《廣雅》), Guanzi(《管子》), Hanfeizi (《韓非子》), Yanzi chunqiu (《晏子春秋》), Lushi chunqiu(《呂氏春秋》), Shanhaijing (《山海經》) and Fengsu tongyi (《風俗通義》) in the versions collated and revised by Wang that are now scattered around libraries of rare books in China and Taiwan and are in closed stacks never opened to the public. Upon exploration and careful examination, these titles will be compiled as entries in a publication to be entitled Wang Niansun guji jiaoben suojian jiaogai jiaoyu huibian (《王念孫古籍校本所見校改、校語彙編》, A Collection of Collation and Interpretation from collated versions of ancient texts revised by Wang Niansun) and will be uploaded onto the internet for easy access. It is our hope that the extremely valuable fresh materials thus made available will open up a new path for researches into Wang’s studies.

Mindful that these collated versions represent no more than Wang’s early findings, we will also compare and contrast them with Wang’s other works which were completed in his middle and old age in an attempt to reveal the principles that the great scholar adopted for collating ancient texts and to trace how he developed his theory of textual criticism and semantics.

http://www.wangniansun.net

Cantonese is normally regarded as a language that has an unusually rich repertoire of postverbal elements, many of which cannot be found in Mandarin. The question arises as to the syntactic representation of these functional categories and their preverbal counterparts in clausal structure. This project focuses on the syntax of functional categories in Cantonese, concentrating on the discontinuous constructions of functional categories and their dialectal variation under a parametric framework. In this proposed project, I will investigate systematically how a postverbal element in the discontinuous construction interacts with its preverbal counterpart. The descriptive results can be used as a database for future research in Chinese grammar and Chinese dialectology. To account for the empirical findings observed, this project will formulate a syntactic theory of the discontinuous constructions in Cantonese, and identify parameters from which the dialectal variation emerges. The theoretical part of the project will provide a theory of the discontinuous constructions in Cantonese that is grounded on comparative dialectal consideration. The vision behind this proposal is that the differences between Cantonese and Mandarin with respect to the discontinuous constructions can be all traced back to some ‘micro-parameters’ that will have predictable consequences in a number of constructions in these two dialects. This is a task that has not been taken before. The results are expected to help in fine-tuning the grammatical knowledge of the discontinuous constructions and to enable us to open up a new horizon in the study of functional categories in Chinese at large, resolving some longstanding disputes and controversies surrounding their syntactic nature in Chinese. It is also hoped that the project could provide a perspective from Chinese dialectal grammar on the understanding of the peripheral positions of a sentence in human language, shedding light on the studies of language acquisition and facilitating language learning of Cantonese and Mandarin/standard Chinese.

本課題以二十世紀以來地下出土的戰國簡帛資料為主要對象， 試圖借此對戰國時代的漢語語法作比較全面深入的研究。 這與以往主要以傳世古書來研究漢語史的做法不同。 本課題將充分利用出土資料無可爭辯的真實性特點， 結合其種類比較豐富、時代較為明確、地域分佈比較廣泛等優點， 對戰國簡帛資料中所反映的各種語法現象作細緻的描寫和深入的分析， 並力求作出合理的解釋。各方面的研究都將儘量與同時期傳世古書 所反映的同類語法現象進行聯繫和比較，補充或糾正過去漢語語法史 研究中的不足或錯誤。同時，為了闡明某些語法現象的產生和演變， 研究時還將與甲骨文、金文等資料以及秦漢簡帛資料進行必要的對比。

古知莊章精組聲母在現代漢語方言中語音形式歧異，分合類型複雜， 歷史層次豐富，向來為漢語方言學者所矚目。其今讀類型及其所反映的歷史層次 不但是漢語方言分區的重要標準，也是考察各大方言歷史演變和相互間歷史關係 的重要視角。此前有關研究多限於單點或某一區域，尚無貫通南北古今的考察； 在諸如知章組讀如端組是存古形式還是晚近演變等問題上，學界也有不同看法。 本計劃擬就四組聲母在現代漢語方言中的今讀類型、歷史層次作一全面深入的研究， 以期在解決上述問題的同時，也有助於深化對漢語方言學、漢語語音史中相關問題的認識。

The pronunciations of words belonging to the 知, 莊, 章, 精 series in the Middle Chinese initial system differ greatly among modern dialects. The complexity in coalescences and divisions of these four series as well as their diverse origins and developments have long attracted the attention of scholars in both dialectology and historical phonology. Questions such as whether the merger of the 知，莊 series with the 端 series reflects the retention of an ancient feature or a phonological evolution in recent times still remains controversial. Indeed, the modern pronunciations and the historical development of these initial-series serve as important criteria not only for classification of Chinese dialects, but also for a critical examination of the historical development of and relationship across dialects. As previous studies are constrained by surveys of either a single location or a small region, a comprehensive investigation across China is crucial for any further research in this regard. This research project proposes a thorough study of the four series of initial consonants by (1) examining their diverse patterns of realization in modern dialects and (2) analyzing the diachronic layers that such patterns reveal. The study will also deepen our understanding of other related issues in Chinese dialectology and historical phonology.

The aim of this research is to investigate the “Eileen Chang phenomenon” (Zhang Ailing xianxiang 張愛玲現象) in Hong Kong, through the study of the adaptations and reception of her works. Eileen Chang (1920-1995) is one of the most important writers in modern Chinese literature. Her works, enjoying both literary acclaim and wide popularity, have been adapted into various media forms, including films, TV series, broadcasting series, drama and dance theatre. This “Eileen Chang phenomenon” is a topic worthy of detailed investigation. Key issues addressed in the project include: 1. how are Chang and her works received in Hong Kong, 2. why and how are her works adapted by Hong Kong directors, 3. how are the adaptations of her works and life received in Hong Kong, 4. how is the reception of Chang in Hong Kong differ from that in the mainland and Taiwan, and 5. what light do the above findings shed on the cultural characteristics of Hong Kong.

The project is divided into two parts: 1. Documentation of research materials. An archive will be built on the reviews and adaptations of Chang’s works. Interviews will be conducted with Chang’s reviewers and adaptors to provide a comprehensive understanding of the “Chang phenomenon.” 2. Textual analysis and theoretical reflection. Texts composing the “Chang phenomenon” will be examined in detail. The project will rethink the inter-textual perspective by revisiting the notion of the author. By comparing the historical Chang and the received Chang, the project will present Chang as an individual trapped between modernity and tradition, while her reviewers and adaptors prefer to read her as a symbol of metropolitan modernity.

The outcome of the project includes: 1. academic papers to be published in refereed journals, 2. interviews with Chang’s adaptors and reviewers to be published in literary journals, and 3. an online database with search function. The project is academically significant not only to the study of modern Chinese literature, but also to enhancing the importance of Hong Kong in the study of Chang and in the field of literary studies. It will also provide valuable reference sources for research and education. As present research on the reception of Chang mainly focuses on that of the mainland and Taiwan, this project on Chang’s reception in Hong Kong will make pioneering research of its kind.

Over 100 Chinese dictionaries for transmitted texts and excavated texts were published in the last few decades. Although these dictionaries, mostly synchronic, often contain the same words or words of similar meanings, they differ from one another in their nature and methodology. A prominent problem concerning them is that none of the individual dictionaries is able to boast a full collection of all the representative usages of a particular word. This has led us to wonder whether the dictionaries as we have today do not have any room for improvement.

To compile a synchronic dictionary, one needs to have a good understanding of the complete lexical landscape of the particular period concerned. A study on both the transmitted texts and excavated texts become indispensable in obtaining such an understanding. We have taken advantage of modern technology to establish a database of the entire body of ancient Chinese texts in order to conduct meta-analyses. This up-to-date method for compiling a dictionary of ancient Chinese plays an essential part in the study of the ancient Chinese lexicography.

For the above-mentioned reasons, we began a project titled “An Integrated Study of the Pre-Han and Han Lexicon: The Establishment of a Multi-Purpose Online Dictionary of Ancient Chinese Texts先秦兩漢詞彙綜合研究──古代漢語多功能網絡辭典之構建” in 2005. This project was subsequently recommended as a Pilot Project for a period of 12 months and funded by the RGC. Since its inception in January 2007, the project has made use of the CHANT Database and designed a program system, namely ‘Automatic Compiling Program System for Retrieval Database for Ancient Chinese Disyllable and Polysyllable Words’ (RDDPW), to build up a complete pre-Han and Han glossary. With RDDPW, different kinds of glossaries are being compiled. A glossary of vocabularies found in pre-Han and Han ancient Chinese excavated texts begins to take shape. The study on pre-Han and Han ancient Chinese transmitted text lexicons has also been commenced and is progressing as planned. Part of the research results has been incorporated into an online lexicon database. Furthermore, a dictionary of the glosses found in Gao You’s commentaries on three Chinese texts is under preparation. The first of its own kind, this dictionary is scheduled to meet the public in 2009.

After the completion of the preliminary research task, we believe that it is the right time to propose an extension for this pilot project. The second phase of this research project aims at extending the research scope to cover all the pre-Han and Han transmitted texts. Our team will make full use of RDDPW to cull words from all texts and compile a series of pre-Han and Han glossaries, which will then be used to study the usage of particular words and their evolution. Research results will be, as usual, made available to the public. With the online lexicon database, scholars all around the world can conduct word search with any particular historical period, region/state, author, medium, genre, etc.

「關中」一語見於《史記》卷七《項羽本紀》，《集解》引徐廣說明它的範圍是： 「東函谷，南武關，西散關，北蕭關。」（中華書局標點本冊一頁315。）即今日陝西 大部及甘肅、寧夏、河南與陝西接壤的部分地區。本計劃的「關中方言」根據一般的 地理概念，適當考慮方言特點與分區。研究對象包括今陝西境內屬於中原官話關中片、 秦隴片的方言。這是學術界比較一致的看法。

1933年，中央研究院歷史語言研究所白滌洲先生調查了關中42縣50個方言點的語音 系統，後來由喻世長先生整理出版了《關中方音調查報告》（北京：中國科學院，1954年， 以下簡稱《報告》），《報告》系統的描寫了關中方言的語音狀況，對一些音韻特點及其演變、 地理分布作了簡略的討論。這是早期官話方言研究重要的著作，但由於條件所限，當年白滌洲 先生調查關中方言時，有些縣沒有調查縣城方言，包括渭南等十二個。也遺漏張安等九個縣。

其次，《報告》還有如下缺點：（1）《報告》沒有將聲調和聲母、韻母配合起來， 這一點羅常培先生在《報告》的序中已指出。（2）《報告》只反映了400多個單字音（缺聲調）， 而且大都是文讀音。（3）《報告》沒有連讀變調。（4）《報告》完全沒有詞匯、語法的調查 內容。所以對關中方言的研究仍有很大的發展空間。

另一方面，這部著作仍是觀察關中方言七十五年來的演變提供了絕佳的參照系， 在語音方面，如中古知莊章組聲母的演變及其與精組字的關係，導致今天聲母的顎化或者 是韻母及介音一系列變化，有的跟隨普通話，有的與普通話背道而馳，成為關中方言一個 顯著的特色。計劃以該《報告》為基礎，調查當代關中方言的概況，並就其中聲母與介音 問題深入研究，計劃內容大要如下：
(1) 調整方言點，去其重複，補其缺漏，注重代表性，將調查點定為47個。
(2) 調查內容將單字音增至2,000餘個，並注重文白異讀及連讀變調。
(3) 新加詞匯、語法項目，詞匯約1,500個，語法例句100個，並以表格方式排列，方便對照。
(4) 著重調查內容的系統性、共時性，並對有關材料作動態性的跟蹤調查， 通過與白滌洲先生著作的歷時比較，以及各方言點之間的共時比較， 深入研究關中方言聲母與介音的演變及二者競爭的結果。 計劃完成後，有《當代關中方言聲母、介音的演變研究》、《關中方言字音對照集》、 《關中方言詞匯、語法對照集》三部著作。

Neo-Confucianism underwent a process of officialization during the late Song period(1208-1279), a development that cast a direct impact on the literati through the education and examination systems. Neo-Confucians strived to incorporate literature into the philosophical tradition, thereby setting a new trend in creative writing. Despite the influence from Neo-Confucianism, creative writers nonetheless were making efforts to protect the literary tradition itself. Hence, a great tension was generated between Neo-Confucianism and literature, a relationship that was characterized by both confrontation and accommodation. This project aims to examine such a tenuous relationship through a critical study of the compositions and writer groups of the time and the prevalent concept of literature and literary criticism itself. It is hoped that the findings will help us to reconstruct this unique feature of late Song literature and also its influence on subsequent literary movements.

Place names often reveal the histories not only of localities and their inhabitants but also of the languages in which they were coined. In the naming practices of Hong Kong villages, towns and streets, a variety of languages have been at work. Names revealing phonological, grammatical or semantic characteristics of languages other than Cantonese can be traced to early settlers like the Zhuang, Miao, She or migrants from other parts of China such as Hakka, Min and Wu speakers. British colonialization also left its imprint. While many western names were transliterated into Chinese, local appellations were also romanized according to different spelling systems, which captured contemporary linguistic features. In this project, Hong Kong place names recorded in maps and documents from the last two to three centuries will be systematically studied to delineate language evolution during the period, and the renaming of places will be analyzed within a socio-linguistic perspective.

Contrary to other readings of the novel, Sanguo yanyi, as built around only one theme, one idea, or one narrative structure, this project proposes to explore the presence of a multiplicity of themes, meanings, ideologies and structures, and seeks to investigate the dialogues among them.

Mok Man Cheong(莫文暢, ?—1917) had worked as a court interpreter, a comprador and a school teacher before moving into the shipping industry and later on becoming a ‘zhili’(值理) at the Tung Wah group of hospitals in Hong Kong. His first important publication, The Tah Tse Dictionary（達辭字典）, was very well received indeed and it remains in use as a reference book even up to the present day. In an effort to help his contemporaries to learn English as a second language, Cheong introduced the sound-matching approach to tackle English pronunciation in his other book, English Made Easy（唐字調音英語） and it comes as no surprise that this English-Cantonese sound-matching manual was highly praised by A.W. Brewin, the then Registrar-General of Hong Kong. According to the British Library Catalogue, English Made Easy was reprinted many times and thus its influential status back in the early part of the twentieth century can hardly be doubted. Sound- matching documentation as such is central to the studies of Chinese linguistics but unfortunately the importance of English Made Easy has for long been overlooked. Previous studies of this book were largely undertaken from the perspective of English teaching, even though English Made Easy contains a significant amount of valuable and reliable data, which prove indispensable to any attempt to understand the changes of Hong Kong Cantonese over the years. It is the first book authored by a Chinese scholar to have noted the phenomena of ‘high leveling (上高平)’ and ‘high entering (上高入)’ in Cantonese intonation and it contains the earliest documentation of ‘san-pin-fa (三拼法),’ which contrasts sharply with the more commonly used ‘shuang-pin-fa (雙拼法).’ Of no less importance is Cheong’s detailed account of the cultural changes in Hong Kong. This research project will delve into the wealth of phonetic and vocabulary data contained in English Made Easy with a view to work out a comprehensive and accurate historiography of the multifarious changes that inform Hong Kong Cantonese, placed in the context of Chinese linguistics, and the myriad of socio-cultural factors that nurtured them.

Over 100 Chinese dictionaries for transmitted texts and excavated texts were published in the last few decades. Although these dictionaries, mostly synchronic, often contain the same words or words of similar meanings, they differ from one another in their nature and methodology. A prominent problem concerning them is that none of the individual dictionaries seems to have been able to boast a full collection of all the representative usages of a particular word. This has led us to wonder whether the dictionaries as we have today still have room for improvement. To compile a synchronic dictionary, one needs to have a good understanding of the complete lexical landscape of the particular period. A study on both the transmitted texts and excavated texts become indispensable in obtaining such an understanding. A time-consuming and arduous task as it is, we have to take advantage of modern technology, establishing a database for the entire body of ancient Chinese texts and conducting meta-analyses. This up-do-date method for compiling a dictionary of ancient Chinese plays an essential part in the study of ancient Chinese lexicography. Large-scaled and systematic research on Pre-Han and Han ancient texts is such a task that it cannot rely just on the research carried out by individual scholars, but requires the strong and long-term support of an organization. The Research Centre for Chinese Ancient Texts, under the aegis of the Institute of Chinese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, has established six traditional and excavated ancient Chinese texts databases which are widely recognized by the academic community. Geographical areas involved covers the most important cultural regions such as the Chu 楚, the Qi 齊, and the Lu 魯, while the time period extends from the Shang to the Six Dynasties. The proposed project will make use of all these databases and design a computer program that can help cull words from the texts to build up a complete Pre-Han and Han glossary. This glossary will then be used to study the uniqueness in the usage of particular words and their evolution. Based on this study, a multiple-purpose online dictionary can be made available to scholars all around the world, so that they can conduct word search with any particular historical period, region/state, author, medium, genre, etc.

Huang Zunxian 黃遵憲 (1848-1905) is generally admired as the most prominent poet of late imperial China, and his Renjinglu shicao 人境廬詩草 attracts unceasing critical attention ever since its publication in 1911. As Huang played an influential role in the reform movement in the late Qing period, the importance of Renjinglu shicao is, therefore, not confined to the field of literary study. It has become the centre of attention in the study of Huang Zunxian. However, to most readers Huang’s poems are far from easy to understand. As a solution to this problem, annotations to Huang’s poems appeared in large number in the past century, among which Renjinglu shicao jianzhu 人境廬詩草箋注 by Qian Zhonglian 錢仲聯 (1908- ) was unsurpassed in terms of comprehensiveness and rigorous scholarship. Unfortunately, these annotations looked somewhat obsolete to readers today and thus failed to function adequately as a tool to the understanding of Huang’s mind and achievements. This research project aims at providing scholars and common readers with practical, informative and reliable annotations on Renjinglu shicao by utilizing and bringing together the following:

．results of the research on Huang in the past century as much as possible as source materials for the annotations;
．today’s information technology to its full extent in searching for source materials for the annotations;
．my own experience in the past 25 years in studying and teaching Huang’s poems, literature of the late Qing period, and classical Chinese poetry.
．It is expected that this project and the results it produces would provide a useful paradigm for future annotations of classical Chinese poems.

Wang Niansun and Wang Yinzhi were both Qing scholars distinguished for their studies in semantics. In their works of Jinyi Shuwen（《經義述聞》） and Dushu Zazhi（《讀書雜志》）, devoted to explaining the dubious meanings of the classics, and annotating previous interpretations of the histories, philosophers and collections respectively, the two scholars, already advanced in years, documented their scholarly discoveries in the form of notes. Dispersed and scattered throughout the two books, the explanations and annotations have been difficult to locate. As such, this project aims to compile them as entries of individual characters or words in a publication to be entitled Jinyi shuwen dushu zazhi xungu ziliao huibian（〈經義述聞〉、〈讀書雜志〉訓詁資料彙編》, A Collection of Semantic Materials from Narrated Sayings on Interpretation of the Classics and Miscellaneous Reading Notes）.

The present project aims at examining the linguistic relationship between the Northern Min and its surrounding dialects. Known for several peculiarities, Northern Min has attracted attention from the academia for years. Most of the debates fall on the origins of one or two individual linguistic features. A systematical study on the whole linguistic body from historical perspective, however, has never been carried out. It is thus necessary to conduct a thorough study on this subject.

Northern Fujian encompasses a great variety of Chinese dialects, including Min, Gan, Hakka and Wu. Language contact is a natural result. Our project will make use of the modern theories of “language contact” and “language stratification”, in the attempt to achieve a better understanding of (1) the history of the Northern Min, (2) the mode of interactions between dialects, especially Min and Gan, and (3) the corresponding strata of different dialects.

Special concern will be placed on the historical documents written in Northern Min compiled / translated by the early missionaries. They provided invaluable information on a language of more 100 years ago. The language systems they reflected will be served as the basis of our discussions. In addition, a detailed dialectual survey will be conducted in the Northern Fujian region. The materials we gather will enable us to build a large-scale comparative work on language stratification.

All areas of the Northern Min will be studied: phonology, lexicon and grammar. The results of our investigations will be submitted to renowned journals in the field.

This research proposes an in-depth and comprehensive study on the literary supplement of New Life Evening Post（Hsin Sheng Wen Pao 《新生晚報》, NLEP）.NLEP has a tremendous wealth in the primary resource of Hong Kong Literature and Culture. With a life span of three decades, from December 1945 to October 1975, NLEP had enjoyed a wide readership. NLEP had two main literary supplements:‘Xin Qu’（新趣） which concentrated on literary columns and serial fictions ; and ‘Shen Qu’（生趣）which could be viewed as an integrated literary supplement. In the early history of NLEP, Chen Jun-bao （陳君葆） was the director and editors included a number of leading figures in paper journalism like Gao Xiong （高雄）、Liang Kuan（梁寬）, Fang Long-xiang （方龍驤）, Shi Ren（石人）. For authors contributing column articles and serial fictions, NLEP has San Su （三蘇）, Shi San-mei（十三妹）, Dong Qian-li（董千里）, Ping Ke（平可）, Xi Xi（西西）, Lu Li（陸離）, Dai Tian（戴天）and Li Ying-hao（李英豪）. This research proposes to provide a lucid overview of how NLEP literary supplement influences Hong Kong Literature and affects the making of Hong Kong cultural map. Moreover, it proposes to study the position and the impact of NLEP on the development of Hong Kong Literature, with the aim to trace the evolvement of the subjectivity of Hong Kong Literature. Moreover, this project plans to use NLEP literary supplement as an archive, hence giving detailed studies to a number of particular authors, writing groups, genres and selected topics on urban culture. Results of our research will be exhibited in three capacities: compilation of oral history, research papers, works and data compilations.

This research proposes a study of the literary supplements of the Overseas Chinese Daily News (Wah Kiu Yat Po 華僑日報 OCDN) of Hong Kong, with the aim to trace the evolvement of its ideological inclinations and artistic preferences throughout its seventy years of history, so as to investigate its relationship with the development of Hong Kong society and literature, and its contribution to the formation of Hong Kong identity. This project has a long-term significance in supplementing the research on both Hong Kong literature and Hong Kong newspaper history. The study of Hong Kong literature began to receive attention from scholars since the 1980’s. However, studies in the field largely focus on published books, while newspaper supplements were neglected due to the lack of raw materials compilation. Since the adherence of literature to newspaper supplements is a unique phenomenon of Hong Kong, the study of newspaper supplements is essential to the investigation of Hong Kong literature.

This project focuses on the OCDN due to the following reasons: (1) it is the newspaper with the longest history in Hong Kong, (2) it is locally established and has a strong social concern, (3) most works in the OCDN literary supplements (the Supplements) have not been compiled into anthologies. A systematic study of these scattered works will facilitate further research on Hong Kong literature and shed light on the relationship between the socio-cultural conditions and the development of literature. The research involves 2 stages: (i) systematic and exhaustive documentation. We will build an archive of the Supplements and compile an oral history based on interviews with the editors and writers relating to the Supplements. (ii) detailed analysis of the works in the Supplements will be analyzed from the social, cultural and aesthetic aspects. We will adopt the mythology of fukan xue (the study of newspaper supplement 副刊學), which constituted an established field of research in the Mainland and Taiwan (See Part III for references). As in Hong Kong, we believe that the present project will make a pioneer large-scale research of its kind. The results of our research will be published both in printed compilations and on a specially designed OCDN online database.

The past twenty years saw large-scale integrated survey reports on various main dialects. Surveys are there on Yue粵 dialects by Zhan Bohui and Zhang Risheng and Hakka客家and Gan贛dialects by Li Rulong and Chang Song Hing. There are as yet no special surveys on Min dialects that cover all provinces and districts. In the 1950s, Min dialect district was divided into Southern and Northern Min dialect districts. In the 1980s, these 2 districts were redivided into Southern, Eastern and Northern Min sub-districts. The term “Min dialects” had long been used to designate dialects within the Fujian province. But in fact the actual distribution of Min dialects stretches from southern Zhejiang in the north, going down south along Fujian, Guangdong and Guangxi; then across the harbours to Hainan and Taiwan Islands. In addition, many Chinese in Southeast Asia who emigrated from China also speak some Min dialects. Min dialects are so complicated that only a large-scale survey with careful collection of data (1) can give a better description of the special nature of the Min dialects; (2) can establish indications for district division; and (3) can study their historical changes and patterns of migration. This study has selected 30 points which can be taken as representational. They are as follows: –

The fieldwork will make use of our survey materials: Dialect Pronunciation Survey Handbook (about 2300 characters), and Dialect Vocabulary Survey Handbook (about 2100 vocabulary items and 150 sentences). Information gathered from the survey will be published under the tentative title of An Integrated Survey and Study of Min Dialects. Related materials will also be available on World Wide Web for the common use of the public.

The CHANT Database, now directed by Prof. Ho Che Wah of the Chinese Department is a long standing project in the Institute of the Chinese Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong covering both traditional and excavated ancient Chinese texts spanning the two millennia from 1500 BC to about 600 AD into one single, vast and comprehensive database. It has been working over a decade with quite a few generous Earmarked Grants and Central Allocation from the RGC. The present project mainly focuses on the completion of the last database, the Leishu (extant Chinese Encyclopaedias) Database, which would exceed 40M characters in total. With the completion of this project, the CHANT database is truly comprehensive, consisting of all sorts of excavated and traditional materials, which we believe, would be the most comprehensive electronic library of ancient Chinese texts.

http://www.chant.org/

Chinese Encyclopedias (Leishu) are reference books consisting of extracts from sources extant at the time of compilation. By the time of Tang and Song dynasties, the compilation of leishu became fashionable and many well-known examples of leishu were published, e.g. Beitangshuchao, Yiwenleiju, Taipingyulan and Cefuyuangui.

The database of the entire corpus of the extant Pre-Han & Han and the Six dynasties traditional Chinese texts (the CHANT database) were completed by the Institute of Chinese Studies in the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1991 and 1997 respectively. Some missing titles/passages, however, are to be found in the form of citations in leishu. The objectives of the present study are: I) to build a computerized database of the entire corpus of extant leishu, II) to make a comparative study of citations appearing in leishu and the CHANT database. There are three tasks we set ourselves. First, by comparing the earliest citations with extant versions, we hope to be able to correct textual mistakes wherever they occur. Second, we propose to make an analysis of the variant readings through textual comparison. In this way, we can get closer to the texts as they were in their original form, which may differ significantly from extant versions. Third, we are able to identify all the text of which are not found in extant editions so that such missing parts can be culled out and re-constituted for textual studies.

The database, when completed, will not only be important for textual studies, but will also be useful for related studies such as philosophy and syntax in historical perspective. As citations are classified according to subject and periods, it will be helpful to historical linguists in their attempt to study the diachronic development and changes of the Chinese language. Since we have the entire body of all traditional texts up to the Six dynasties, we can make sure that the study is exhaustive and accurate. Due to the magnitude of the task, we have divided the project into two phases, with Phase I handling all leishu from the Three Kingdoms to the Song Dynasty and Phase II from the Yuan Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty.

The complete collection of leishu for exhaustive study has always been of interest to many scholars. This was, however, a daunting task without the assistance of modern technology. There has been no attempt to make into reality yet. With our experience in building up ancient text databases, we are confident that we will be able to make the project a success.

本計劃乃跨古文字學、古聲韻學及古漢語語法學等學科之大型整合計劃，計劃中擬利用近四十年來公佈之新出土楚文字材料，根據有關通假字之音韻現象，經歸納、比較及詳細分析，製作先秦楚簡文字聲系表，復運用所得成果，重新整理及建構先秦楚方言之音、韻系統，並探究楚簡文字之語法現象與先秦楚文獻語法規律，嘗試建立一嶄新之先秦楚語法系統。

一九八九年，香港中文大學中國文化研究所成立「古文獻資料庫中心」。該中心首項計劃為「先秦兩漢一切傳世文獻電腦化資料庫」，以電腦重新紀錄兩漢及以前全部傳世文獻，並編纂《先秦兩漢古籍逐字索引叢刊》，及以電子媒體出版「漢達古籍資料庫檢索系統」，臂助學者從事漢學研究。

香港新界的面積984.74 平方公里，有客、粵、閩三種系屬不同的方言，並非純粹的廣州腔粵方言區，1998年對新界六百多條村初步的調查，旨在了解都市化前這些村的原居民所採用的方言，結果是客家村359個，佔57％，圍頭村（屬粵語）167個，佔26.5％，蛋家村33個，佔5.2％，福老村5個，佔0.8％，混合村66個，佔10.5％。這個調查只核對一些語言材料，並對七個點的方言記錄了約200個字的讀音和五十個常用詞的用法。本計劃在上述調查的基礎上，選取更多的方言點，記錄更多的語言資料，編寫成《新界方言調查報告》：（包括10個方言點，調查2000個單字，2000餘個詞語及語法句，並加分析）。並繪制《新界方言地圖集》：（包括100個方言村，50個單字，30個詞條，繪成超過80幅方言地圖）。

To effectively master Putonghua and standard modern Chinese, Hong Kong students first nceed to know the differences between standard modern Chinese and Cantonese as well the general rules for translating one into another. The aim of this project is to develop teaching resources comparing Modern Chinese and Cantonese for students of different levels in primary and secondary schools. The outputs will be effective teaching aids in the teaching and learning of Chinese language.

香港中文大學中國文化研究所分別於一九九一年及一九九五年完成先秦兩漢以及魏晉南北朝全部傳世文獻電腦化資料庫，臂助漢學研究工作者掌握原始文獻資料，進行各項研究工作。

In the past century, vocabulary stood out in the domain of Chinese language as the area that underwent the most significant and swift changes. The increase of new terms paralleled the influx of new concepts and new things from outside then. This trend of emergence of new terms in modern Chinese language started in the late Qing period, and Liang Qichao (1873-1929) was the key person responsible for the introduction and the diffusion of these terms. During the period from 1896 to 1907, with the assistance of his fellow reformers, Liang introduced new learning and new things through three journals, namely, Shiwu Bao 時務報，Qingyi Bao 清議報，and Xinmin Congbao 新民叢報. As the chief editor of these three journals, he enlivened new terms in Chinese language by making them popular in society. A significant part of the vocabulary we use in Hong Kong today can be traced back to these journals. Yet Liang’s contribution to the establishment of modern Chinese lexicon awaits full appreciation. Researchers of this project will study in details the new terms appeared in Liang’s three journals and examine the patterns of their formation, the paths of their diffusion, the new concepts they represented, as well as their influence on the lexicon in Chinese-speaking regions including Hong Kong.

The QESCC is a project aimed at enhancing high quality education in Chinese Culture for upper form and A-level students as well as raising the professional standards of front-line educators teaching Chinese Culture. Participants of the QESCC will benefit enormously by acquiring the following beneficial tools of learning and teaching in two years time (1998-2000). 1) A systematic and coordinated Chinese Culture database on the Internet which is carefully tailored by experts in Chinese Culture studies 2) Well-organizing complementary cultural activities including talks, guided visits, workshops, group discussions, and seminars held by experienced scholars in CUHK which are bound to be scholarly sound in high quality. 3) Publications related to the database and the complementary cultural activities, i.e., Newsletters, a series of VCD on Cultural talks, and a collection of essays that related to the teaching Chinese Culture.

本計劃開發了「博文網站」(http://bowen.chi.cuhk.edu.hk)，提供平台討論有關中國語文問題，該網站現由香港中文大學中國語言及文學系管理。