Fangyan

The Fāngyán (; literally meaning "regional speech"), edited by Yang Xiong, was the first Chinese dictionary of dialectal terms. The full title is Yóuxuān shǐzhĕ juédài yǔ shì biéguó fāngyán (輶軒使者絕代語釋別國方言) "Dialect words of other states in times immemorial explained by the Light-Carriage Messenger," which alludes to a Zhou Dynasty tradition of imperial emissaries who made annual surveys of regional vocabulary throughout China. Yang's preface explains that he spent 27 years collating and editing the Fangyan, which has some 9000 characters in 13 chapters (卷).