[3] In the Song dynasty, Su Dongpo describes a community that employed a form of sign language.
[3] Later in the Ming dynasty, there is a portrayal of signing in a play entitled Zen Master Yu Has a Dream of Cui Village (also translated A Dream of Master Jade in Green Village; simplified Chinese: 玉禅师翠乡一梦; traditional Chinese: 玉禪師翠鄉一夢; pinyin: Yù Chánshī Cuìxiāng Yī Mèng) by Xu Wei.
From the school, a sign language based on an oralist approach to deaf education was developed, coming out of the Milan Conference of 1880.
[5] Schools, workshops and farms for the deaf in diverse locations are the main ways that CSL has been able to spread in China so well.
[5] Northern CSL has the greater influence from Chinese, with for example character puns[clarification needed].
A key feature of the fingerspelling is the treatment of pinyin ZH, CH, SH and NG as single fingerspelling signs, rather than sequences of two letter signs, as would be expected from the pinyin; this reflects the phonemic status of these oral sounds in Standard Chinese phonology.