The phonetic transcriptions used in this book for Mandarin data are the officially adopted hànyŭ pīnyīn spelling used in China. The data from various Chinese dialects are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet adopted by the International Phonetic Association (see Appendix 1).

China and Chinese in the world

For centuries China stood as the most powerful country in Asia with a splendid civilization, outpacing the rest of the world in many ways. With the longest unbroken line of recorded history, its extant literature has lasted for more than three millennia, with a legacy extending back to 1500 BCE and with many outstanding Chinese scholars in science, philosophy, literature, and many other fields that continue to influence the modern world. However, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, China was devastated by a series of foreign invasions, famines, and internal turmoils that prevented it from keeping pace with the rapid developments in science and technology and caused it to lag behind the industrialized world in many aspects. It was not until 1979, when Chinese leaders decided to reopen China's doors to the outside world and to convert its state-planned economy into a market-oriented one, that China's national economy started to develop at one of the world's fastest growth rates. After more than twenty years of sustained development, China is now the fourth-largest trading nation and has the second-largest foreign reserves in the world.