# Transcript

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[TEXT ON SCREEN: pin yin zhi fu. The Father of Pinyin.]

He's 102, but he's still hard at work. Aside from the shelves of books in his modest Beijing flat, there's little to show that Zhou Youguang has helped up to a billion people in China to learn, to read, and write. It's 50 years since he developed a new way of representing Chinese on the page. And pinyin has become by far the most widely used method of putting the language into the Roman alphabet.
ZHOU YOUGUANG:
People call me the father of pinyin. I say that's not true. I'm not the father of pinyin. I'm the son of pinyin.
It is the long tradition from the later years of Qing dynasty down to today.
SPEAKER:
Zhou found his place in the history books by chance. He was working in a New York bank when the communists took power, and he chose to return home to help rebuild his country's economy. Languages were only a hobby, but with few experts in the field, the government insisted he should take charge.
ZHOU YOUGUANG:
The government thought this is a very important work. At that time more Chinese were illiterate. It was not possible to establish a new country with so many illiterates.
SPEAKER:
Chinese has no alphabet. Each word has its own character, which doesn't show how you should say it, so pinyin helps children to associate words with the characters which represent them; and it teaches those brought up speaking other Chinese languages how to pronounce Mandarin.
ZHOU YOUGUANG:
That's the Chinese pronunciation of "yīng guó."
SPEAKER:
The work of his team has helped to slash the illiteracy rate in China from 80% to just 10%, but his change in career also proved a personal blessing when Mao's first campaign against intellectuals began in 1957.
ZHOU YOUGUANG:
Mao Zedong disliked greatly the economists, especially economic professors from America. By that time, I'd shifted to the line of language and writing. If I remained in Shanghai teaching economics, I think I certainly could be imprisoned for 20 years. And later during the Cultural Revolution, the Great Cultural Revolution, I was called 'fan dong xue shu quan wei', a reactionary academic.
SPEAKER:
He was sent to work in the countryside, but as soon as he was rehabilitated, he picked up with his studies where he'd left them. He still publishes a paper each month and says he has no plans to take it easy as he approaches 103.
ZHOU YOUGUANG:
I retired long ago. I left my office at the age of 85, and since that time I read and write in my home, in this small room, a very small room.

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