An almost 100-year-old English textbook might be the earliest such book printed in China, its owner, Mr. Wang, told reporters last week in Beijing.

The 440-page textbook, titled English with Chinese Phonetics (Tangzi Diaoyin Yingyu), was possibly published in 1904 or before, pre-dating another early textbook, English Words at Entrance Level (Ying Zi Ru Men), which was previously thought to be the earliest English textbook in China.

The book is a marvelous production in many ways. Though almost a century old, with pages yellow with age, the various letter types are still clearly recognizable, displaying the high standard of print quality at that time.

According to the conventions then, the Chinese passages are printed vertically, while Chinese explanations are printed both vertically and horizontally.

As the book title suggests, the textbook uses Chinese characters to provide phonetic equivalents for English words, thus constituting a major drawback of this early school tutorial work. Since there was no such thing as standardized Mandarin (Putonghua) at that time, the phonetics were arranged in line with the so-called ‘orthodox’ Cantonese, resulting in a misleading and what today seems a quite funny effect. Nevertheless, the book has been praised as a “revolutionary guidebook inventing creative study methods for those aspirant people doing foreign businesses,” as it is described in the foreword.

The book’s publication date can be traced through letter from Hong Kong contained in the book, dated Sep. 8, 1904.

The book was acquired by its present owner, Mr. Wang, quite by chance. In 1992, when he was living in Papua New Guinea, an old local Chinese, originally from Guangdong Province gave Mr. Wang the book as a gift.

(Beijing Today 06/04/2001)