Hanyu Da Cidian

The chief editor Luo Zhufeng (1911–1996),[1] along with a team of over 300 scholars and lexicographers, started the enormous task of compilation in 1979.

The Hanyu Da Cidian includes over 23,000 head Chinese character entries, defines some 370,000 words, and gives 1,500,000 citations.

A separate index volume (1997) lists 728,000 entries for characters by their position within words and phrases, something like a reverse dictionary.

"Despite the fact that it weighs over 20 kilos and contains a total of 50 million characters spread over 20,000 large double-column pages," says Wilkinson,[2] "the Hanyu da cidian is an easy dictionary to use to the full because it is unusually well indexed."

It includes male and female sound files for single-syllable pronunciation, and enables more than 20 search methods.