This CC-licensed book is written by Mr. WU Shiqiu, a 74-years-old retiree in Qingyuan, Zhejiang Province. WU has been a worker in a small local factory until he retired in 1996. He has never had higher education than elementary school, yet he managed to finish this great study all by his own effort.

In 1996, WU learned that two Japanese scholars had come to his town for a research in Qingyuan dialect, as it is a unique dialect that reserved an abundance of ancient Chinese idioms and pronunciations. WU was greatly impressed and he then decided to make a study himself.

From then onwards, WU spent all his energies on this study. He walked every street in Qingyuan, visiting old folks, listening to and recording quarrels, bargaining and any other conversations made in public. Without a printer, scanner or even a computer, WU finished most of his work by handwriting. He studied linguistics, philology and phonetics, and international phonetic alphabet to mark his beloved dialect.

The book is published in May, 2010 and is highly regarded by scholars home and abroad. And Mr. WU has embraced Creative Commons, he decided to publish this book under CC-BY-NC-ND.