15 Facts About Lufei Kui

Lufei Kui was a Chinese educator, essayist, linguist, and publisher.

Lufei Kui founded the influential publisher Zhonghua Book Company, and was an early advocate for simplified Chinese characters.

Lufei Kui's mother was a niece of Li Hongzhang, a famous Chinese politician during the late Qing dynasty.

Lufei Kui was influenced by new thought and was thus pro-revolutionary.

Lufei Kui joined the underground revolution movement and became a surveillant.

In late 1906, Lufei Kui joined Wenming Books, a textbook publishing company as an editor, and became the headmaster of Wenming Primary School.

In 1908, Lufei Kui joined The Commercial Press, and soon was put in charge of publication and communications.

In 1909, the Commercial Press started the first professional magazine in education in China, the Education Magazine, and Lufei Kui became its Editor-in-Chief.

Lufei Kui believed that education was the key in making a better nation.

Lufei Kui published many essays and thesis on the magazine to introduce his ideas in educational reforms.

In 1909, Lufei Kui published an article titled "General Education Should Use Vernacular Characters" on Jiaoyu Zazhi.

In 1922, Lufei Kui published another article "Deliverance on Coordinating Chinese Characters", in which he suggested that educators should respect the simplified characters invented by the folk and should adopt these characters in their teaching.

Lufei Kui is known as the founder of Zhonghua Book Company, one of the most influential contemporary publishing company, in textbooks, dictionaries, translations of important books in the world, as well as in Literary Chinese and Chinese historical publications.

Lufei Kui founded Zhonghua Book Company in 1912 on the same day as the founding of Republic of China and immediately published a new set of textbooks for schools in the post Qing dynasty republic.

Under the management of Lufei Kui, Zhonghua published a series of important books for Chinese cultural and historical studies, such as Zhonghua Da Zidian, Cihai, Sibu Beiyao and the Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China.