Cihai

The Cihai is a semi-encyclopedic dictionary and enters Chinese words from many fields of knowledge, such as history, science, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and law.

"[4] The Cihai originated when Lufei Kui, founder of the Zhonghua Book Company, decided to publish a comprehensive Chinese dictionary to compete with rival Commercial Press's 1915 Ciyuan (辭源 "source of words").

[5] Under the editorship of Shu Xincheng (舒新城, 1893–1960), Shen Yi (沈颐) and others,[citation needed] over 100 lexicographers worked for two decades to compile the Cihai, which was published in 1936.

[6] The Taiwan branch of Zhonghua published a Cihai reprint in 1956 with minor revisions additions and corrections.

Reinhard Hartmann describes the editorial work of revising Cihai as taking "a tortuous course, 22 years from start to finish".

From 1961 to 1962, sixteen shiyong (試用 "trial") individual subject-matter fascicles were distributed for comments by specialists, and in 1965 a weidinggao (未定稿 "draft manuscript") Cihai was completed, but the anti-intellectualism of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) halted editorial work.

The third volume appends useful charts (e.g., a chronology of Chinese history), tables (weights and measures), lists (Ethnic minorities in China), and a pinyin index to single characters.

Chen Zhili replaced Xia Zhengnong as chief editor, and lexicographers deleted about 7,000 entries for outdated terms and added almost 10,000 for neologisms.