Zhou Youguang celebrates his 110th birthday

When it comes to Chinese culture, Zhou said that Chinese pinyin is the key to promoting Chinese culture onto the world stage. Against the backdrop of globalization, every one lives in a bilingual culture. At such a critical moment, Chinese pinyin serves as a culture bridge to connect the East and the West, he said. Without Chinese pinyin, people of two cultures cannot achieve effective communication, let alone people-to-people interaction at all levels.

As a young man in 1923, Zhou enrolled in Shanghai Saint John's University, where he majored in economics and took supplementary coursework in linguistics. In his 50s, he was placed as the head of a committee to reform the Chinese language to increase literacy. In addition, he was in charge of drawing up a plan to regularize the pronunciation of the Chinese characters and Chinese pinyin was made the official pronunciation system in 1958.