Chinese-only dictionaries of characters and words (zidian 字典 and cidian 辭典)

Hanyu dacidian 漢語大詞典. 13 vols. Ed. Luo Zhufeng, et al. Shanghai: 1995, 2001. W 6.4.1

This dictionary is the most recent of the encyclopedic literary dictionaries and is intended to be the ultimate unabridged work of that type. Indeed, it is hard to imagine that it will be surpassed anytime soon. Work began in 1975, when more than 400 linguistic researchers joined the editorial board. The dictionary lists all of the different forms of each character and uses the modern Chinese phonetic alphabet to show the pronunciation of the Chinese characters. The etymology is detailed, and meanings and uses of each character are clearly defined and amply illustrated. This is perhaps the most useful dictionary available for the serious scholar; remember, however, that if a lot depends on the reference cited by the editors, you are wise to run down the original citation yourself. There is an abridged 2-vol. version. Also available (minus the citations for examples cited) on CD in the HYL Reading Room, online via HYL - Apabi site link to Hanyu da cidian (password protected), and Russian Academic Dictionary Project link.  

Kangxi zidian 康熙字典. Zhang Yushu, Chen Tingjing, et al., eds. Compiled under imperial auspices from 1710 to 1716. Several editions.  Four corner index. W 6.2.1.5 / T&B 129-130

The Kangxi zidian famously lists over 47,000 characters, though a great many are simply graphic variants. Like the Ciyuan and Cihai, the Kangxi dictionary includes data of the most heterogeneous kind, drawing indiscriminately on the Guangyun, Qieyun, Zhengyun, etc. for pronunciation guides. The compilers also failed to utilize fully the research results of the Qing philologists. Probably not the first dictionary you will reach for, despite its fame. 

Ciyuan 辭源. Lu Erkui et al. Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1915. 2 vols. W 6.2.2 / T&B 132-133

This modern phrase dictionary, based upon the Kangxi zidian 康熙字典, includes book titles, technical terms and names, but it is far from exhaustive. Most of its illustrative quotations were taken from secondary sources without being checked, but it is good for late 19th century phrases. Available in an inexpensive one-volume edition, this dictionary is among the most useful for common use. The latest edition is indexed according to pinyin and radicals. Ciyuan is available online, but only by separate subscription.

Cihai 辭海. Shu Xincheng et al. Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1937. 2 vols. 1 volume ed. published in 1948. W 6.3.2 / T&B 133-134

Originally meant as competition for the Ciyuan (though there is not always a quotation given for definitions), it has evolved into kind of an encyclopedia that is more useful for work on modern China than on Chinese history. There are many useful tables and appendices. There is a readily accessible online version, called Dacihai 大辭海. Finished in 2015, this expanded version of the Cihai, all in simplified characters, contains 280,000 entries.  

Gudai Hanyu zidian 古代漢語字典. Zhuang Shuangdi and Chen Tao, eds. Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1998.

This is one of the most useful small dictionaries for looking up the meaning of single characters. The emphasis is upon literary or “classical” Chinese. The dictionary uses radicals. It contains both complex and simplified characters. There are two very useful appendices: One is a list which compares the regular and simplified characters. The other is a list of the fonts of early Chinese characters.

Wang Li gu Hanyu zidian 王力古漢語字典. Wang Li et al. Beijing : Zhonghua shu ju, 2000. W 6.2.2

Like the Gudai Hanyu zidian 古代漢語字典, this popular dictionary is useful for reading literary Chinese. It includes over ten thousand characters and organizes them according to radical. This dictionary helps readers efficiently grasp the essential meanings of one character by classifying various meanings into three categories: core meanings, extended meanings, and rarely-used meanings. In addition to convenience, this dictionary offers meanings with precision. It carefully differentiates one character from other characters with analogous meanings, such as 教 and 誨. For readers who have interests in etymology, it also points out characters sharing the same origin. 

Zhongwen da cidian 中文大辭典. Zhang Qiyun, et al. Taipei: Zhongguo wenhua yanjiusuo, 1962, 1972. W 6.4.2 / T&B 133

This comprehensive dictionary is arranged by radicals. Critics of this dictionary argue that the compilers reproduced mistakes in earlier dictionaries, and that they shamelessly raided Morohashi. With the availability of the Hanyu dacidian, users will want to turn there first, rather than to this work.

Guoyu cidian 國語辭典, revised ed. Taiwan Ministry of Education

A Taiwan-based Chinese-Chinese online dictionary. Though not as comprehensive as the big dictionaries, it gives examples and is easy to search. A more user-friendly interface can be found on the website Mengdian 萌典.

Souwen jiezi 搜文解字. National Science Council (NSC), Taiwan

Light and flexible online dictionary offering search by character (字), word (詞), and phrase (句).  The built-in character dictionary – Hanyu dacidian / 漢語大字典 – includes 3,000 high-frequency characters. Search by word or phrase draws from Lunyu 論語, Mengzi 孟子, Daxue 大學, Zhongyong / 中庸, Laozi / 老子, Zhuangzi / 莊子, and Tangshi sanbaishou / 唐詩三百首 and yields both word frequency and examples.

Dictionary of Variants 異體字字典. Taiwan Ministry of Education

A very useful online tool for searching more than 100,000 variant and historic forms of characters, this dictionary is the result of a project begun in 1996. Search options include searching by radical, stroke number, zhuyin, pinyin, cangjie, four-corner, or by simply typing in the character (assuming you know its pronunciation). In addition to showing multiple variations of a character's form (including in different fonts), entries also provide definitions and examples of usage; Shuowen jiezi entries are pasted in a sidebar.

Lishi wenzi ziliaoku tonghe jiansuo xitong 歷史文字資料庫統合檢索系統. Academia Sinica

Similar to the Dictionary of Variants, this newly launched database (October 2020) not only provides graphs of character variation across time, but also boasts a total of 1.5 million high-resolution images of characters, which can be downloaded free of charge from the index. The scans are particularly useful when trying to compare graphs across a range of material sources, as one can see how a certain character looks on bamboo, wood, etc. 

Chinese Characters Dictionary Web.

A unique site that enables one to look up characters simultaneously in multiple online dictionaries. Useful to find related compounds, and also to discover the relationship between characters of similar structure (i.e., radical). Provides simple English translations. If you want to do a deep dive on a single character, this is not a bad place to start.

Multi-function Chinese Character Database 漢語多功能字庫. Research Centre for Humanities Computing, CUHK.

This database includes archaic script forms (oracle bone, bronze and small seal scripts) and etymology accounts aiming at tracing the original structure of the character and the change in different graphical forms. It also includes an English-Chinese lookup function, as well as the meanings of the characters in their relation to their particular pronunciations.

Handian 漢典

This resource incorporates not only modern dictionaries but also the Kangxi zidian 康熙字典 and Shuowen jiezi 說文解字. Another striking function is that one can find the pronunciations from various dialects, along with Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, and ancient readings, including 上古音 and 中古音, and graphic variations from oracle bones, bronze inscriptions, etc. It is also very comprehensive, in that it contains zidian, cidian, and chengyu cidian. Last but not least, it provides brief English, French, and German translations, along with audio of the word's standard Chinese pronunciation. Though it's sometimes a bit slow to load, the wait can be worth it. 

Many other dictionaries (more than 10,000) of various sorts are available online via the CNKI Chinese Reference Works Online website 中国工具书网络出版总库. That site, and many other useful sites, are listed and linked in the "Research Guide for Chinese Studies" maintained by Xiaohe Ma at the Harvard-Yenching Library. You will also find a great many dictionaries listed on the "Classical Historiography for Chinese History" website maintained by Benjamin Elman at Princeton University.

Other resources for the classical language

Peiwen yunfu 佩文韻府. Zhang Yushu. Beijing: Beijing Ai ru sheng zi hua ji shu yan jiu zhong xin, 2009.

The work is not a dictionary or a thesaurus, though it can serve as both, but an early 18th-c. compilation of phrases, sentences, and words intended to help the aspiring poet. Examples of usage rather than definitions are given in this monumental compilation, where there can be found the locus classicus of a term or phrase often in poetry or other bellettristic literature. This is thus an encyclopedia of literary allusions, and is arranged according to rhyme of the last character. The rhyme category is based upon the 105 rhymes in the Pingshui yun and can be found in the Ciyuan or Cihai. Both are indexed. Also searchable via the online Siku quanshu.

Bilingual dictionaries

A Chinese-English Dictionary. Compiled for the China Inland Mission. R.H. Mathews. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1996 (18th reprint edition). W 6.2.2.6 

Strange as it seems, there is no gold standard for Chinese-English dictionaries (of either classical or modern Chinese) and there probably never will be. Early 20th-c. efforts to produce an authoritative English-language dictionary of classical Chinese failed and no one has since risen to take up the cause. This state of affairs leaves Western scholars wishing to translate Chinese historical texts into English – something we do all the time – in something of a bind. This is why your first move should be to one of the Chinese-Chinese dictionaries described above (or one of the two described immediately below). Nonetheless, there is no denying that most of us at some point (i.e., nearly every day) will need to consult a Chinese-English dictionary for help. For most of us, that dictionary will be the much-maligned Mathews, first published in Shanghai in 1931. It is hard not to fault Mathews for its many shortcomings, but almost everyone uses it (this is why the revised 1943 edition is still in print!). It is not as useful as Herbert Giles’ 1892 dictionary, though at least it is portable, whereas Giles (at 10” thick) is not. But with fewer than 8,000 characters and only 120,000 words and phrases, Mathews will as often as not leave you disappointed. In that case, it is either back to a Chinese-only dictionary or to one of the two following works. An interesting biography of Mathews, an Australian, is available here.

Dai Kan-Wa jiten 大漢和辭典. Morohashi Tetsuji. Tokyo: Taishukan shoten, 1943 (vol. 1); 1955–1960 (vol. 1 revised and vols. 2 13). Rev. ed. 1966-88; rev. and enlarged ed. 1984-86. W 6.4.3 / T&B 133n3

This is the biggest and, some would argue, best dictionary of the Chinese language ever compiled. It has an estimated 500,000 single character and compound entries. There are several indices in the work. The first index gives the on 音 (Chinese) reading and the second the kun 訓 (Japanese) reading. There is another index based on radicals and overall stroke order. The dictionary's major weakness is Buddhist terminology, but it is especially strong etymologically, tracing early usages somewhat like the OED. It includes personal names, book titles in their standard and variant forms, illustrations, and other useful information. The notation is in Japanese, but quotations are kept in Chinese. For those on a budget, this work has been pirated on Taiwan and is legally for sale there. A must-have in the sinologist’s library, and one of the main reasons that generations of sinologists have been made to study Japanese. A digital version is available for purchase as of 2018.

Grand dictionnaire Ricci de la langue chinoise 利氏漢法辭典. 7 vols. Paris, 2001. W 6.4.4

If you are more comfortable using French than Japanese, this may become your new favorite dictionary. The Grand Ricci is an encyclopedic dictionary designed for scholars as well as for people involved in business with China. Fifty years in the making, it contains approximately 13,500 single characters and 300,000 compounds, along with a wealth of appendices. Characters are grouped alphabetically according to their romanized pronunciation. Homophones are inserted in square at the head of each section and are easily identified by their reference number, tone, graph, radical, and frequency of usage. Definitions take into account phonetic and graphic variations and also provide semantic histories from the Classics up to the present. Available in print, on CD-ROM, and online through HOLLIS. 

A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese. Paul W. Kroll. Leiden: Brill, 2015.

This zidian 字典 contains 8,200 characters with definitions in English and an emphasis on changing usage between 500 BCE and 1000 CE. It is not nearly as comprehensive as the Morohashi or the Grand Ricci, and its focus on the classical and medieval periods is less than ideal for scholars of late imperial China. However, it corrects for some of the inadequacies of Mathews, most notably the lack of periodization, and is a convenient first point of reference for unfamiliar characters. The print edition is large-print and arranged by pinyin, with a radical index at the back. Each entry includes a reconstructed middle Chinese pronunciation. In addition to print and an online edition available through HOLLIS, it is available as a plug-in on Pleco, where it can be paired with the Hanyu dacidian.

Administrative terms and official titles

A Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China. Charles O. Hucker. Stanford University Press, 1985. W 17.6.1

The text includes a general discussion of governmental organization era by era, pointing out continuities and discontinuities all the way from Zhou through Qing. A Dictionary of Official Titles is in Wade Giles with characters after the title, followed by the dynasty in which the office occurs and the name in English assigned to it. There is also a brief discussion of the responsibility of the official or office. The main body of the dictionary is followed by an index to suggest an English rendering, an index of Chinese terms, and a conversion table from pinyin to Wade-Giles. There are included over 8,000 official titles, agency names, and related terminology. 

Present Day Political Organization in China. H.S. Brunnert and V.V. Hagelstrom. Revised by N.T.H. Kolessoff; translated by A. Beltchenko and E.E. Moran. Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1912; Taipei reprint edition widely available. W 66.4.4

This book is based both on the Da Qing huidian 大清會典 (Administrative Statutes of the Qing Dynasty) and on the new government reforms that were carried out in the last years of the dynasty. Some of the offices mentioned in here ended up being ephemeral, but the index is extremely useful and is the source of the standardized translations acceptable to most Western scholars of Qing bureaucratic ranks. Essential for every Qing historian. More information on recently replaced, reformed, or abolished offices may be found in Mayers, The Chinese Government, below, or in the Russian original: I.S. Brunnert and V.V. Gagel'strom, Sovremennaia politicheskaia organizatsiia Kitaiia (Peking, 1910).

Qingdai zhiguan ziliaoku 清代職官資料庫.

This online resource provides "one-stop shopping" for any search of office holders in the Qing, whether by office or by person. It is tied to MQNAF (and is a backdoor into that system, in fact), and should be regarded as more accurate than any published reference, including Qian Shifu. Drawing on a vast database that includes all parts of Qing officialdom, and including references to the Veritable Records, the Qingshi gao, and key secondary sources, this is a site with many functionalities that every Qing historian will find it useful to explore.

Qingdai zhiguan nianbiao 清代職官年表. Qian Shifu, ed. 4 vols. Zhonghua, 1980, 1997. W 66.4.4

An essential reference work listing the officeholders of all the top posts in the Qing government for the entire Qing period. Organized chronologically by office. Reliably indexed by subject surname. Individual entries show posts transferred from and/or to, making it possible to track an official’s movement through the bureaucracy.

Qingji zhiguan biao 清季職官表. Wei Xiumei, ed. W 66.4.4

While essentially similar in outline to Qian Shifu above, the chronological coverage of this work is limited to the period between ca. 1786 and 1911. It offers easy searching by name, position, and date, allowing one to follow a position or career chronologically, or to take a high-level snapshot at a given point in time of the entire Qing administrative structure (divided into administration of China proper and frontier/banner administration hierarchies). This resource is maintained by the Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica.

Ch'ing Administrative Terms: A Translation of “The Terminology of the Six Boards with Explanatory Notes.” E Tu Zen Sun, trans.” Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014.

A translation of the Liubu chengyu zhujie 六部成語註解, a dictionary of technical terms related to administration that was compiled by and for clerks serving in the Qing government. Not a place to search for official titles, but an invaluable reference for deciphering Qing “bureaucratese.” The work is very well indexed, by term and by subject.

The Chinese Government. William Frederick Mayers. Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1878. W 66.4.4

This is very similar to Brunnert and Hagelstrom. Although much smaller in coverage than that work, it has the advantage of having been compiled before the extensive reforms of the first decade of the 20th century and therefore treats some offices later abolished. It does not reflect the changes in government structure after the late Qing reforms. There is both a radical and alphabetical index.

Zhongguo lidai zhiguan bieming dacidian 中國歷代職官別名大辭典. Gong Yanming, Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2006.

One of the most comprehensive dictionaries for official titles in imperial China. Organized by stroke. Contains many alternative names for 9,400 official posts. Searchable online via the CNKI Chinese Reference Works Online website 中国工具书网络出版总库.

Biographical dictionaries

Ershiwushi renming dacidian 二十五史人名大辞典. Huang Huixian 黄惠贤 and Zhao Zexuan 赵泽轩, eds. Zhengzhou Shi: Zhengzhou guji chubanshe, 1997.

Contains useful biographical data and references to names in the dynastic records.

Zhongguo lidai renming dacidian 中国历代人名大辞典. Zhang Huizhi 张撝之, Shen Qiwei 沈起炜, Liu Dezhong 刘德重, eds. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chuban she, 1999.

Contains biographical data of approximately 54,500 famous people from antiquity to the 1911 revolution.

This is just a partial list. For a fuller description of materials of this sort, please consult the section on Biographical sources.

Geographical dictionaries

This is just a partial list. For a fuller description of materials of this sort, please consult the sections on Local gazetteers and Geographical sources and maps.

Zhongguo lishi diming dacidian 中國歷史地名大辭典. Shi Weile, ed. 2 vols. Beijing, 2005. W 15.17.1.2 

Over 70,000 entries on place names from antiquity up to 1949, with detailed notes on variations and origins of names. 

Zhonghua renmin gongheguo diming da cidian 中華人民共和國地名大詞典. Cu Naifu, ed. 3 vols. Shangwu, 1998-2000. W 15.17.1.1

Contains 180,000 place names, including historical toponyms. Thorough and based on much original research. Contains finding coordinates.

Qingdai zhengqu yange zongbiao 清代政區沿革總表. Niu Pinghan. Zhongguo ditu, 1990. W 66.6.2

Complete tables and lists of the political subdivisions used in Qing China, indicating exact dates of most major changes and references to the Shilu.

The Cities and Towns of China: a Geographical Dictionary. G.M.H. Playfair. Hong Kong, 1879 and Shanghai, 1910. W 66.4.3

An English-language version of the abridged French translation of the Jiaqing edition of the Yitong zhi, this was a classic work for generations of early Sinologists. Mainly of antiquarian interest today.

Religious and philosophical dictionaries

Chūgoku shisō jiten 中国思想辞典 Hihara Toshikuni, ed. Tokyo: Kenbun shuppan, 1984.

Hihara was one of the leading Japanese historians of China, best known for his studies of the role of legal ideas in classical Confucian thought. He and 293 specialists contributed to this dictionary, which contains 1,430 items ranging from terms in Buddhist thought to biographical sketches of leading 20-century Chinese intellectuals. The items are organized according to kana syllabary, as is the index. Chinese names and terms are organized according to Japanese pronunciation.

A Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms. William Edward Soothill and Lewis Hodous. London, 1937.

This is the best dictionary for non Buddhologists. It is arranged by strokes, containing Sanskrit and English equivalents.

Digital Dictionary of Buddhism 電子佛教辭典

Draws on Soothill and several other dictionaries to provide a comprehensive dictionary of Buddhist terminology. Includes explanations of words in their religious context and etymologies.

Other specialized dictionaries

MCST: Modern Chinese Scientific Terminologies 近現代漢語學術用語研究

This database offers scholars who are interested in the transmission and reception of Western knowledge in modern China a reference tool to look into the traces of the formation of modern Chinese scientific, philosophical, and political terms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. It contains resources such as dictionaries, textbooks, encyclopedias, translations, and writings that employed new terms and words, produced by people involved in the transmission of Western knowledge to China. You can look up a Chinese term to find how it was used in the texts, finding the English meanings these terms intended to convey, and you can also search how a certain English concept was expressed in Chinese terms during that period. The results of your search will be presented in chronological order, with each entry covering the information of the name of the producer or the translator of that text, the citation, and the translation of the term. By February of 2004, as the database indicates, there were "entries on roughly 2500 individuals, 9500 texts and 136,000 words that were coined as equivalents of European and/or Japanese terms used in many different branches of knowledge.”

Manchu Dictionaries

Handwörterbuch der Mandschusprache.  Erich Hauer. 3 vols.  Tokyo, 1952-55.  Revised edition, edited by Oliver Corff.  Wiesbaden, 2007.

With the possible exception of Zakharov (see below), this is the best dictionary of the Manchu language done into any Western language. Words and definitions are culled from a range of actual materials, rather than being pulled from Qing-era dictionaries, and attributions (though not sentences) are given. The original work, long out of print, was compiled from the cards he left after his death by Hauer’s students, and published in Tokyo in order to accommodate the inclusion of Chinese characters. The revised edition  provides corrections and expanded Buddhist vocabulary.

Xin Man-Han da cidian 新满汉大词典. Hu Zengyi 胡增益.  Xinjiang Renmin Chuban She, Urumqi, 1994.

The best Manchu-Chinese dictionary that has yet to appear, Hu worked on the same basic principle as Hauer, researching words directly from original materials, and covering a greater range than Hauer.  Examples and attributions are provided.  The pinyin-based transcription system takes a little getting used to, but is not a major obstacle, especially as Manchu-script entries are provided.  There is a short and quirky Manchu-English word list at the back.  Unfortunately, this work is out of print but used copies are not hard to find.

Manshūgo jiten: Kaitei zōhoban 満洲語辞典.  Kawachi Yoshihiro 河内良弘. Kyoto, 2018.

A major addition to the lexicography, Kawachi’s definitive new Manchu-Japanese dictionary was compiled on the basis of Qing-period dictionaries, grammars, and lexical aids, along with archival documents, the Veritable Records, and other original sources.  Examples of usage are given, with references and Manchu script entries.  Uses Möllendorff transcription.  Entries also include references to the location of terms drawn from the Qingwen jian and the Yuzhi Qingwen jian.  Easily supersedes Haneda’s dictionary.  

A Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary. Jerry Norman.  Cambridge, MA, 2013.

The most convenient work to consult for English speakers, this work relies on a combination of prior Qing dictionaries and an increased number of selections from original literature.  The author consulted extensively with native Sibe speaker in Taiwan while compiling the original dictionary, A Concise Manchu-English Lexicon (Seattle, 1977; see below), than which it is about one-third larger.  The revised version also contains a new section on pronunciation.  

Pol’nyi Man’chzhursko-Russkii slovar’ / Manju Oros yongkiyame isabuha gisun-i bithe.  Ivan Ilich Zakharov. St. Petersburg, 1875.

Considered by many to be the most complete dictionary of Manchu done in any Western language, this remains the “bible” for Russian Manjurists. Zakharov was a diplomat stationed in Beijing from 1839-1850, and later professor at St Petersburg. Though it has a huge number of entries, no attributions are given. Entries are in Manchu, w/ transcription in Cyrillic. You may download your own copy thanks to Google Books.

Calendrical concordances and conversion tools

Jinshi Zhong-Xi shi ri duizhao biao 近世中西史日對照表. Zheng Hesheng, ed. Nanjing, 1936. Later reprints in Taipei (1966) and Beijing (Zhonghua, 1981).

For most Qing historians, the easiest guide to use for date conversion. Covers the period between 1516 and 1941, w/ special calendar of Taiping dates.

兩千年中西曆轉換. Academia Sinica.

Permits two-way conversion of years between Western and Chinese calendars. Provides drop-down menus for dynasty, emperors posthumous name, and reign period.

歷史車輪 ("The Wheel of Time"). Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

Fast and simple interface permits two-way conversion of years from the first reign year of the Han dynasty (207 BCE). It is probably the easiest site to find out the tiangan dizhi of a particular year or date. The site also features a (seemingly random) variety of other tools, many of which appear to be crowd-sourced.

Buddhist Studies Time Authority Databases.

Permits conversion between Chinese and Western dates, providing equivalents in the Korean and Japanese calendars as well. Search functionality is somewhat laborious, requiring one to proceed in stages from reign period, to year, to month, to day, but complete tiangan dizhi information is presented at the last stage, which makes browsing easy once you get there. Converting the other direction, you can choose between Julian and Gregorian calendars.

Ricci Roundtable Pinyin/ Wade-Giles Comparison Table.

Chinese Phonetic Alphabet Pinyin and Wade System Conversion Tables.

Suzhou numerals/Arabic numerals Converter 蘇州碼－阿拉伯數字轉換器.

Suzhou numerals or huama 花碼 is a numeral system used in China before the introduction of Arabic numerals, used as shorthand in number-intensive areas of commerce such as accounting and bookkeeping. So they usually appear in primary sources such as account books, land contracts, etc., measuring amount, weight, length, area, etc. This tool helps us to easily convert Suzhou numerals to Arabic numerals.

Bibliographies and manuals

Chinese History: A New Manual, Fifth edition. Endymion Wilkinson. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Asia Center, 2017.

The first "Wilkinson," numbering about 200 pages, appeared in 1973 under the title, The History of Imperial China: A Research Guide. In 1998 the first of the new "Wilkinsons" was published (with a dark blue cover), covering all of Chinese history. A "revised and enlarged edition" then appeared two years later, with a yellow cover; a third edition, with a maroon cover, came out in 2012, and a fourth, with a green cover, in 2015. The fifth edition, which has a light blue cover, is even larger than its predecessors and is reported to be the last edition planned in hard copy; it is also available digitally via the Pleco platform. This is a comprehensive guide to research on all periods of Chinese history, and at the same time a masterful work of historiography. Every scholar of Chinese history, regardless of period, will find it worth acquiring a copy of this very reasonably-priced encyclopedia. The third edition won the Stanislas Julien Prize.  (Don't know who Stanislas Julien was? Look him up!)

China Bibliography: A Research Guide to Reference Works about China Past and Present. Harriet Zurndorfer. Honolulu: U Hawaii Press, 1999 (1st ed. Brill, 1995).

Compact and useful guide – a mini-Wilkinson. The list of specialized bibliographies in Western languages is particularly good for those starting on new projects.

Qingshi shiliao xue 清史史料學. Feng Erkang. Taipei: Shangwu, 1993. 

A compact and informative guide to the main types of sources used by the historian of the Qing period. Very useful sections on archival materials.

Chūgoku shiseki kaidai jiten 中国史籍解題辞典. Kanda Nobuo and Yamane Yukio.Tokyo: Ryōgen,1989.

An extremely useful annotated bibliography of primary historical sources.

China: An Annotated Bibliography of Bibliographies. Tsuen Hsuin Tsien and James K.M. Cheng. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1978.

Spans material to 1977, with some entries from 1978. Covers Chinese, Japanese, and Western language materials. Divided into two main parts which deal with general and special bibliographies and subject bibliographies. Included are bibliographies in periodicals and serials, bibliographic essays, listings of bibliographies in monographs, and surveys of literature on specific periods or fields. Arranged by topic with annotations.

Modern Chinese Society: An Analytical Bibliography. G. William Skinner. Three volumes: Publications in Western Languages; Publications in Chinese; Publications in Japanese.

See the review symposium on this bibliography in the Journal of Asian Studies 35.2:277 299 (February 1976). Of 90,000 potential entries, 31,441 were finally selected. There are 72 main category headings with an additional 26 subcategories. The work has 6 indices; there are library, source, area, and locational codes.

Bibliotheca Sinica: Dictionnaire bibliographique des ouvrages relatifs à l'Empire chinois. Henry Cordier, Paris: Guilmoto; Guethner, 1904-1924. 5 vols. Reprinted New York: Burt Franklin, 1968 (with addition of author index).

This is the granddaddy of all bibliographies that set the mold for works like those of Lust and Yuan, and topically spans material dating from the earliest Western contact with China to about 1920. Volume six is an author index, compiled by Columbia University and published in 1953.

Bibliotheca Sinica. 2nd ed. Henri Cordier. Paris, 1904 1908. 4 vols. Supplementary vol., Paris, 1924. Author index, N.Y.: Columbia University East Asiatic Library, 1953.

Dated, but still unsurpassed in its comprehensive coverage of the literature on China in western European languages prior to the 20th century. Important entries annotated.

China in Western Literature. Tung li Yuan. New Haven: Yale University Far Eastern Publications, 1958.

Designed as a supplement to Cordier, it covers Western books published in the years 1921–1957. It is very useful and comprehensive, arranged by topics, and has an index of authors.

Index Sinicus: A Catalogue of Articles Relating to China in Periodicals and other Collected Publications, 1920–1955. John Lust. London, 1964. 2nd unabridged ed. 663 pp.

This includes 19,734 articles, reviews, and obituary notices in Western languages published in a thousand periodicals, memorial volumes, symposia and proceedings of congresses and conferences between 1920 and 1955. It is a continuation of Cordier's Biblioteca Sinica and a supplement to Yuan's China in Western Literature. There two indices to facilitate reference, an authors index and a subject index. No Chinese characters are used. There is a good comprehensive coverage of the humanities, including history of science.

Zhongguo shixue lunwen suoyin: 1900-1937 中國史學論文索引. Comp. Zhongguo kexueyuan lishi yanjiusuo and Beijing daxue lishixi. 2 vols. Beijing, 1990.

Self explanatory, and useful for exploring this era of free-ranging Chinese historical scholarship. This index and the one following are effectively replaced by the online CNKI academic journals database 中国学术期刊网, which covers most academic periodicals from the early 20th c. forward to the present and offers many types of search functionalities.

Zhongguo shixue lunwen suoyin: 1938-1949. Comp. Zhongguo kexueyuan lishi yanjiusuo and Beijing daxue lishixi. Beijing, 1980. 2 vols.

Continuation of above, until the founding of the PRC.

Premodern China: A Bibliographical Introduction. Chun-shu Chang. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, 1971.

Spans material selectively to about 1970. Covers Western language works on China relating to topics from prehistoric times to the nineteenth century. With no explanatory text and only brief non-critical annotations, this work is not in the category of Wilkinson or Wolff. Nevertheless, it contains quite a bit of material, including a section that presents a selected list of Western language reference works.

Revue bibliographique de sinologie. Sponsored by the Ecole pratique des hautes études. Paris and Le Havre: Mouton, 1955-2005 .

This was an unusual attempt to present brief abstracts by a large panel of distinguished authors of important Sinological works in all languages, covering the humanities and social sciences. All abstracts are in English or French, and there is a good index at the end. The series was officially terminated in 2005.

An Introduction to the Sources of Ming History. Wolfgang Franke. Singapore: University of Malaya Press, 1968.

An excellent annotated bibliography, topically arranged.

Qingshi lunwen suoyin (Index to Articles on Qing History) 清史論文索引. Compiled by the Qing History Research Section of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences History Research Institute, and the Qing History Research Institute of China People's University. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1984.

This is a listing of articles on Qing history taken from a broad range of Chinese journals published between 1900 and 1981. Hong Kong and Taiwan journals are supposed to be covered. The journals that have been culled are listed by stroke order in a special appendix at the end of the volume. The articles are listed separately under 12 categories, each with subheadings: political and military affairs, economics, education and examinations, peoples (minzu), religion, social customs, thought and culture (including art and archaeology), historical geography, science and technology, sino foreign affairs (including overseas Chinese), and persons. The latter is a listing by stroke order of titles with people's names in them. With the availability of the CNKI database of academic journals, however, which covers the period from 1915 forward, this is now largely obsolete.

Bibliographies on Chinese history and culture, Barend J. ter Haar.

This useful resource is complied and maintained by Barend J. ter Haar (hamburg). It provides several useful annotated bibliographies on the following subjects: 1. Literacy, writing and education, 2. Violence in Chinese culture, 3. Chinese religious culture, 4. Yao religious culture, 5. Shamanism in China, 6. Religious culture in 20th century China, 7. Falun Gong.

Bibliography of Western Language Publications on Chinese Popular Religion (1995 to the present), Philip Clart.

Compiled and maintained by Philip Clart, this bibliography provides a rather extensive listing of Western language (English, French, and, to some extent, German) publications on Chinese popular religion published from 1995 to the present. These items, along with their abstracts when available, are listed in twenty subject categories, as follows:

1. Popular Religion: General Studies; 2. Key Concepts and Values; 3. Local Studies: Mainland China; 4. Local Studies: Taiwan; 5. Local Studies: Hong Kong and Overseas; 6. Deities and Spirits: General; 7. Specific Deities and Cults; 8. Religious Calendar, Festivals, Popular Customs; 9. Temples and Mountains, Pilgrimage; 10. Ritual; 11. Myths and Folklore; 12. Divination; 13. Shamanism and Spirit Mediums; 14. Death, Afterlife, Tombs, Ancestral Cult; 15. Sects, Secret Societies, New Religions; 16. Popular Religion and Gender; 17. Popular Religion, the State, and Local Society; 18. Popular Religion in Scriptures, Tracts, Literature and Drama; 19. Popular Religion and (Folk) Art; and 20. Popular Religion and Other Religious Traditions.

Zhongguo nongxue shulu 中國農學書錄. Wang Yuhu 王毓瑚 1957 and 1964.

A bibliographic guide to agricultural treatises. Print version is organized by categories, while the online version (available via Apabi) is searchable, but otherwise arranged chronologically. A good reference to manuals, and the basis for later bibliographies, including Amano Motonosuke's 'Chūgoku nōgyōshi kenkyū' (Research on Chinese agricultural history) 中國農業史研究. Many of these manuals are good sources of woodblock illustrations of technology and everyday life.

An Annotated Bibliography of Chinese Agriculture. William Y. Chen, ed. Chinese Materials Center, 1993.

Somewhat less complete than Wang Yuhu's work. A collection of notes on 542 traditional works, plus a second section on contemporary works, both organized by categories..

The History and Culture of Chinese Agriculture 中国农业历史与文化

Maintained by 中国科学院学史研究所, this site includes a variety of resources including full text of several agricultural manuals and links to archeological projects, it is most useful as a portal to many of the recent Chinese language articles on the history of agriculture. The site can be strange to navigate, as it lacks a search feature and can only be browsed by topic.

Technical and Scientific References

Science and Civilisation in China. Joseph Needham, ed. Cambridge, University Press, 1954.

A massive collection of reference books on various aspects of Chinese science and technology, originally written and edited primarily by Joseph Needham (1900-95) starting in 1954, but with many of the later volumes written entirely by other scholars. This collection is a great basic resource for research on science and technology, as well as some aspects of economy and everyday life. Its particular strength is its breadth of coverage. However, given the wide temporal span in which it was published many of the older works are becoming out of date, and due to the wide range of authors, the depth of coverage varies heavily by topic.

Within each volume, there is a bibliography of sources that frequently remains the most useful aspect of the text as some of the historiographical elements come into question. This is followed by analysis of the topic broken down by category; within each category, the text is arranged chronologically. Although there is frequently some spatially oriented analysis, this is often a weakness. There is a tendency to focus on the origins of technologies, with less attention paid to their spread.

The series is explicitly built around the comparison of Western and Chinese scientific development, and each volume contains an essay dedicated to this comparison and assessment of the degree to which Chinese science influenced the West (although generally not the reverse question). This results in an over-emphasis on treaty port scholarship, especially in the earlier volumes by Needham himself.

Also note, the system of romanization used is a somewhat peculiar variant of Wade-Giles, with characters provided in footnotes at the bottom of the page.

All volumes are by Joseph Needham and published by Cambridge University Press, unless otherwise mentioned.

Vol. 1, Introductory Orientations, 1954, 1961.

Vol. 2, History of Scientific Thought (with Wang Ling 王玲), 1956.

Vol. 3 Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth, (with Wang Ling), 1959.

Vol. 4, Part 1, Physics: Physics and Physical Technology,(with Kenneth Girdwood Robinson and Wang Ling), 1965

Vol. 4, Part 2, Physics: Mechanical Engineering, (with Kenneth Girdwood Robinson and Wang Ling), 1965

Vol. 4, Part 3, Physics: Civil Engineering and Nautics (with Wang Ling and Lu Gwei-Djen 魯桂珍), 1971

Vol. 5, Part 1, Tsien Tsuen-Hsuin 錢存訓, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Paper and Printing, 1985

Vol. 5, Part 2, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention - Magisteries of Gold and Immortality (with Lu Gwei-Djen), 1974

Vol. 5, Part 3, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention - Historical Survey, from Cinnabar Elixers to Synthetic Insulin (with Ho Ping-Yu 何炳郁 and Lu Gwei-Djen), 1976

Vol. 5, Part 4, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention - Apparatus, Theories and Gifts (with Ho Ping-Yu, Lu Gwei-Djen and Nathan Sivin), 1980

Vol. 5, Part 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Spagyrical Discovery and Invention - Historical Physiological Alchemy (with Lu Gwei-Djen), 1983

Vol. 5, Part 6, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Military Technology - Missiles and Sieges (with Robin Yates, Krzysztof Gawlikowski, Edward McEwen, and Wang Ling), 1995

Vol. 5, Part 7, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Military Technology - The Gunpowder Epic (with Ho Ping-Yu, Lu Gwei-Djen and Wang Ling), 1986

Vol. 5, Part 9, Dieter Kuhn, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Textile Technology - Spinning and Reeling, 1986

Vol. 5, Part 11, Donald B. Wagner, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Ferrous Metallurgy, 2008

Vol. 5, Part 12, Rose Kerr and Nigel Wood (with Ts'ai Mei-fen and Zhang Fukang), Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Ceramic Technology, 2004

Vol. 5, Part 13, Peter Golas, Chemistry and Chemical Technology: Mining, 1999

Vol. 6, Part 1, Biology and Biological Technology: Botany (with Lu Gwei-Djen and Huang Hsing-Tsung 黃興宗), 1986

Vol. 6, Part 2, Francesca Bray Biology and Biological Technology: Agriculture, 1984

Vol. 6, Part 3, Christian Daniels and Nicholas K. Menzies Biology and Biological Technology: Agro-Industries and Forestry, 1996

Vol. 6, Part 4, George Métailié Biology and Biological Technology: Traditional Botany: An Ethnobotanical Approach, 2015

Vol. 6, Part 5, Huang Hsing-Tsung Biology and Biological Technology: Fermentations and Food Science, 2000

Vol. 6, Part 6, Biology and Biological Technology: Medicine (with Lu Gwei-Djen, edited by Nathan Sivin), 2000

Vol. 7, Part 1, Christoph Harbsmeier Language and Logic in Traditional China, 1998

Vol. 7, Part 2, General Conclusions and Reflections (with Kenneth Girdwood Robinson and Ray Huang, with an introduction by Mark Elvin), 2004