Xiao E

Name: Xiao E
ISBN: 9787301291290

松友梅Peking University Press · ChinaAug 2025

4.5

Word count: 63 words
Chapters: 10
ISBN: 9787301291290

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Summary

Early Beijing Dialect Rare Classics: Collation and Research (and the Early Beijing Dialect Digitization Project) is a research outcome of Peking University's Center for Chinese Linguistics, comprising three parts: Collected Rare Documents of Early Beijing Dialect, Early Beijing Dialect Corpus, and Early Beijing Dialect Research Series. This volume has both linguistic and literary value, gathering representative works by masters of Beijing-flavored fiction from the Republican era. Their writing is pure Beijing dialect, reflecting the face of Beijing speech in the Republican period and providing a strong boost to early Beijing dialect research. Literarily, their creative achievements are a brilliant stroke in Beijing-flavored literature and an important link in its development. The publication of this series will, it is believed, greatly benefit the fields of language and literary research.

Editor's review

Xiao'e is one volume in the series Early Beijing Dialect Rare Classics: Collation and Research, collecting representative works by Beijing-flavored novelists of the Republican era, written in pure Beijing dialect that faithfully reflects the face of Beijing speech in that period. The book has dual value in linguistics and literature: language scholars can draw vivid corpus of early Beijing dialect from it and trace the historical layers of vocabulary, grammar, and colloquial expression; literary researchers can use it to observe the development and creative achievements of Beijing-flavored literature in the Republican era. The collation balances scholarly norms with readability, making it suitable as reference material for modern Chinese, dialectology, and popular literature research. Readers are advised to understand it within the overall framework of the series, note its documentary position in the context of corpus construction, and pay attention to the details of urban social life naturally revealed in the narrative. For general readers, the book can also serve as a window into the flavor of old Beijing speech and the landscape of Republican-era Beijing-flavored fiction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Language scholars and graduate students working on modern Chinese and Beijing dialect research
Modern and contemporary literature researchers interested in the history of Beijing-flavored literature
Readers interested in Republican-era Beijing speech and urban life
Readers needing early Beijing dialect corpus for comparative dialect research

Not a good fit for

General readers who only want light entertainment fiction and are unwilling to engage with documentary collation conventions
Readers with no interest in Chinese language history or dialectology who focus only on plot
Readers expecting modern vernacular or contemporary Beijing-flavored works

Reading tips

Begin with the series general preface and the book's collation notes to understand the sources and editorial conventions.
Mark colloquial Beijing words and special grammatical phenomena as you read for later reference.
Read alongside related results from the Early Beijing Dialect Corpus to deepen understanding.
Literary readers may focus on details of urban life and the portrayal of city dwellers in the narrative.

About the publisher

Peking University Press China · Founded in 1979

Peking University Press is a comprehensive university press whose publishing areas cover classical literature, popular science, social culture, world history, Western philosophy, and culture. Its catalogue contains 6,031 titles, with representative books including A Dream of Red Mansions, Relativity: The Special and General Theory (15th Edition) (with Einstein's classic papers on unified field theory and other topics), Elements, Conics, The Aristocratic Families of the Eastern Jin, The Philosophy of Mythology (Volume I), The Philosophy of Mythology (Volume II), and The Origin of Continents and Oceans. Representative authors include Cao Xueqin, Zhou Ruchang, Albert Einstein, Euclid, Apollonius, Tian Yuqing, Schelling, and Xian Gang. The press has developed distinctive strengths in classical Chinese literature and in the translation of Western philosophical classics, while also covering scientific classics and social and cultural studies. As public information is limited, this description is based only on the books in the catalogue and offers no further extrapolation.

版权信息
总序
“早期北京话珍稀文献集成”序
“清末民初京味儿小说书系”序
校注说明
序一
序二
题辞
小额
参考资料

FAQ

Is this book suitable for general readers without a linguistics background?

It is readable, but expectations should be adjusted. The main body consists of Republican-era Beijing-flavored fiction, and the stories themselves are readable; however, as a collated rare classic, the book includes editorial notes, annotations, and other scholarly content, and the language preserves the original face of early Beijing dialect, with some colloquial words and expressions distant from modern Chinese. General readers are advised to read the introduction for background first, then focus on enjoying the works rather than insisting on understanding every annotation.

What use is this book in early Beijing dialect research?

The works collected here are written in pure Beijing dialect and reflect the actual face of Beijing speech in the Republican period, providing first-hand corpus for research on vocabulary, grammar, and colloquial expression. Combined with the corpus construction and research results in the series, readers can examine synchronic features and diachronic evolution of early Beijing dialect, and compare with other Beijing-flavored works of the same period, expanding the material scope of modern Chinese and dialect history research.

Do I need to read other parts of the series alongside this book?

Not strictly, but reading them together is more effective. The series consists of collected documents, a corpus, and a research series; this book belongs to the documentary collation results. Reading only this book gives a sense of the specific works; combining it with relevant discussions in the research series better grasps these works' place in early Beijing dialect research and the history of Beijing-flavored literature, and clarifies the editors' scholarly intent.

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About the author

松友梅 Author · Chinese

Song Youmei was a Beijing novelist of the late Qing and early Republican period. Public information about him is limited, and many details of his life remain unverifiable. He wrote the novel Xiao E in the Beijing vernacular, which gives this work a distinctive place among Beijing colloquial novels of the period. By using the spoken language of Beijing, Song Youmei depicted everyday urban life and human relations, lending the work a strong local color and a vivid sense of lived experience. Xiao E takes the lower strata of city life as its subject; its language is plain and lively, and its characters speak with convincing individuality. The novel reflects the cityscape and social manners of Beijing at the time, and shows the author's self-conscious use of vernacular narrative and dialect writing. At a time when classical Chinese still held orthodox status while vernacular fiction was gradually flourishing, such writing helped preserve and demonstrate the literary expressive capacity of the Beijing dialect. Because sources are limited, his birth and death dates, native place, associates, and the full range of his writing still await further research; at present the main basis for study is the single work Xiao E.