Depth of characters

Richard Sears, the popular researcher of Chinese characters, nicknamed 'Uncle Hanzi', has redoubled his efforts to uncover the mysteries of ancient Chinese writing, Yang Cheng reports in Tianjin.

Visitors to Tianjin Museum in early December were delighted to meet Richard Sears, the popular researcher of Chinese characters, nicknamed "Uncle Hanzi".

A group of Yueyang Road Primary School students were happy to talk with the US researcher during their visit to an exhibition to commemorate the 120th anniversary of the discovery of the oracle bone characters, on Dec 7.

Sears, 69, shared his knowledge, including the origin of meng, or dream, and the insights and sources of the Chinese characters found on many of the exhibits, with the students.

Sears is the founder of hanziyuan.net, an online resource for studying and learning the etymology of Chinese characters, the first website of its kind.

He is renowned in China for his self-sponsored study of Chinese characters. In 2012, he sold his house in the US and moved to China to intensify his research.

His first port of call was Tianjin, before moving to other cities including Beijing and Nanjing－all of which have, at some point in the nation's history, served as the Chinese capital.

Garnering nationwide praise, the website contained Sears' research of up to 31,000 characters etched on oracle bones, in excess of 24,000 found on bronzeware and more than 11,000 characters engraved on seals. Additionally there is the study of over 38,000 characters found in the Liushutong, which was published in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), and documented "the rules of six types of Chinese characters" in calligraphy.