Introduction
PART I: Wang Li’s life
1 Childhood and early growth of Wang Li (1900– 1924)
2 From Tsinghua to Paris: Wang Li’s pursuit of knowledge (1924– 1932)
3 Years of wandering and steadfast scholarship (1932–1953)
4 The fruitful years at Peking University (1954– 1965)
5 The ordeal of the Cultural Revolution (1966– 1976)
6 The road back and the hallmarks of a master (1977– 1984)
7 The final years and his last wishes (1983– 1986)
PART II: Wang Li’s works
8 Chinese grammar
9 Phonology and phonetics
10 History of the Chinese language
11 History of Chinese linguistics
12 Learning and teaching ancient Chinese
13 Versification of Classical Chinese Poetry
14 Wang Li’s essays
15 Wang Li’s poems
16 Wang Li’s translations
17 Epilogue: The legacy of Wang Li
Appendix 1: A chronicle of Wang Li’s life
Appendix 2: A timeline of Chinese dynasties
Biography
Bo Wang is a researcher in Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada. He is the co-author of Lao She’s Teahouse and Its Two English Translations (2020), Translating Tagore’s Stray Birds into Chinese (2021), Systemic Functional Translation Studies (2021), Introducing M.A.K. Halliday (2022), Systemic Functional Insights on Language and Linguistics (2022), and Introducing Chinese Discourse (2025).
Tianqi Ma is a doctoral student in Linguistics at the University of Macau. She is an experienced song translator who has rendered over 50 songs into singable forms. Her research centres on Chinese–English singable song translation, with particular attention to the musicality of language and its integration with musical structures. Her broad research interests include sound symbolism, creativity in translation practice, human-centred augmented machine translation, and audiovisual translation.
Yuanyi Ma is currently a researcher at the Faculty of Education, Vancouver Island University, Canada. She is the co-editor of Key Themes and New Directions in Systemic Functional Translation Studies (2022) and Theorizing and Applying Systemic Functional Linguistics (2024). She and Bo Wang are translators of Modern Chinese Grammar (2023) and A History of Chinese Grammar (forthcoming) by Professor Wang Li.
“This volume is a long-overdue and vital response to the need for a comprehensive English-language study of Wang Li’s life and monumental academic legacy. As the first work of its kind, the book makes his scholarly heritage accessible to a worldwide readership. It aims not only to pay tribute to the great thinker but also to enrich our global understanding of language, culture, and China’s modern intellectual history. The relevance and insight of Wang Li’s academic thought remain vibrant today, and this volume serves as an indispensable key to unlocking that treasure.”
Guowen Huang, Professor of Applied Linguistics, City University of Macau
“This book on Wang Li is a real treat for Chinese linguists. Wang Li was a founding figure of Chinese linguistics whose work is classic in our field but, to the best of my knowledge, no book of this scope has ever been written in English about his life and works. The three authors carefully navigate their readers through Wang Li's fascinating life, and the book is not only an illuminating academic work but also a genuinely interesting read, which I definitely recommend for both academics and students with interest in Chinese studies and linguistics.”
Dániel Z. Kádár (Member of Academia Europaea; Professor, Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China)
