Ann Wu

I met Ann in 1994 shortly after moving to Silicon Valley. She was a recent immigrant from China and I needed someone to help me scan almost 96,000 characters and put them into a database, and to input the Shuowen. For the next 8 years, Ann was that person. Without Ann, I could never have completed my first website which finally went online in 2002.

I had a job most of the time which allowed me to pay her minimum wage, but sometimes when I was between jobs Ann would work for free.

Ann did not have a high education, which is very important in Chinese society. I never cared about a person‘s formal education I always look to see if they are smart or not and if they can learn or not and if they are willing to work on something until they get it right.

After a couple of years and after having input the Shuowen, I was talking to a well-known sinologist in China. He asked what qualifications Ann had.

I told him: She graduated from Junior high, but she has input the entire Shuowen which probably makes her more of an expert than any of your graduate students”. He agreed with me.

Because of Ann’s experiences during the culture revolution, she has always refused to be interviewed or take any of the limelight, even though she deserves it.

Ann still lives in California.

Dixin Yan 颜迪新

I had communicated with Dixin a couple of years before I became Uncle Hanzi. We communicated a few times. But it was not until 2011 that he affected my life. I was about to get kicked out of the country because of a misunderstanding about my visa. Dixin told my story on his Weibo page and many people came to my aid, finally resulting in me getting a visa and a teaching position teaching physics at Beijing Normal University for the next 4 years.

If it was not for Dixin's help then I would not be here today.

Dixin was a Software Development Engineer at Microsoft at the time and I finally met him face to face on a trip back to Oregon to see my mother and brother.

Most unfortunately, Dixin had spinal cord injury and has been paraplegic for the past several years. Dixin has been very brave in the face of unbelievable odds. He still is a great programmer and a great photographer and a great friend.

In the past several years I have become more well known in China and most recently, I was on a CCTV-1 program called “First Day Of School”. Dixin was interviewed and is now also known to many Chinese people. I hope this trend continues, he deserves it.

Most recently Dixin has been working on this new etymology website. My programming skills have fallen by the wayside over the years, but Dixin is still on the top of his field. He was an MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional).

I hope Dixin can eventually recover from his physical condition and hopefully he will be involved in this project for a long time to come.

Dixin now lives in Seattle.

Dixin's technical blog: weblogs.asp.net/dixin

Dixin's photography: flickr.com/dixin