Liu Bannong

Liu Bannong or Liu Fu was a linguist and poet.

A native of Jiangsu, he was an important contributor to the influential magazine ''La Jeunesse'' during the May Fourth Movement. He began to write poetry in vernacular Chinese in 1917, and was credited to have coined the Chinese feminine pronoun ''ta'' , which he used in his poems. The usage was popularised by the song ''Jiao Wo Ruhe Bu Xiang Ta'' , a "pop hit" in the 1930s in China, with the lyric written by him and the melody by Yuen Ren Chao.

In 1920, he left China for studying linguistics aboard, first London, then Paris. He gained his PhD at the University of Paris, with his experiments done on the Chinese s. During his stint in Paris, he compiled ''Dunhuang Duosuo'' , a pioneering work about the Dunhuang manuscripts.

He returned to China in 1925, and began to teach in colleges. He collaborated with Li Jiarui to compile ''Songyuan Yilai Suzi Pu'' . Published in 1930, it was a key work to the standardisation of simplified Chinese characters. He died of a sudden illness after a trip of linguistic fieldwork, at the age of 44. Lu Xun wrote a short memoir about Liu after his death.