First compiled in the 17th century, it is the pioneering work of all written sources for Min languages, and is widely quoted in modern academic research in Chinese phonology.

[1] As local works, the earlier dictionaries were largely ignored by the scholarly tradition, so inferences about their date and authorship are necessarily based on internal evidence.

[3] The Qī is named in honour of Qi Jiguang, a general who led a mission to evict pirates from Fujian between 1562 and 1567, and presumably dates from the late 16th century.

It is named in honour of Lín Bìshān (林碧山), a native of Minhou County who served as an official in Hebei shortly after passing the advanced examination in 1688.

[13] White based his account of the phonology directly on the Qi Lin Bayin, writing: The system of initials and finals used in the 'Book of Eight Tones', would, if used for that purpose, form (in connection with the tonal marks) a complete alphabet for the Fuh Chau dialect.

Three of the gospels have been written out in this manner by Chinese teachers in the employment of missionaries.To obtain a more convenient system than the Chinese characters naming the initials and finals, White spelled out each of them using the Latin-based alphabet devised by the English philologist Sir William Jones to represent languages of India, the Pacific and North America.