"You might ask why it took so long to complete an apparently simple task but it created a multitude of problems. We received more than 4,000 letters from people in China and overseas. They were full of questions, requests and suggestions. I had to reply to every one in academic language."

 

So how does he evaluate his creation, half a century on? "It is not an absolute solution but it is what it was meant to be," he says. "It has worked better than the previous phonetic alphabet used here (for instance, Zhuyin) or the previous attempt at romanizing Mandarin (Wade-Giles), which had been in use for 100 years when we developed pinyin.

"As soon as we completed it, it was approved by the National People's Congress and adopted as a method for teaching Mandarin to every primary school child in China - at 50 million a year, that is a billion Chinese who have used it to learn how to read and write. It is not perfect but it has worked."

Zhou is especially thankful his peers allowed him to base pinyin on the roman alphabet. "I met with great resistance from them over that issue," he says. "But I insisted on it. Perhaps it was due to my time overseas but I always envisaged pinyin being useful to foreigners, too. I still see it as a bridge between China and the rest of the world, a bridge between cultures."

Events have certainly vindicated him. The International Organization for Standardization acknowledged pinyin in 1982 as the standard system for Chinese phonetic instruction and it has also had the seal of approval from various other bodies, including the United Nations.

Nor has it escaped this centenarian's attention that pinyin has gained a new following in the IT age. "Did you know Chinese people use it to send messages on their cell phones and to type into keyboards - that makes me very happy!" he says with a broad grin.

It is not unreasonable to see pinyin's usefulness here and overseas as a death knell for Chinese characters but Zhou rejects the notion. "If you want to use pinyin to write Chinese, that's OK but it only exists as an aid for Chinese characters, not to replace them. If that were not official policy people would oppose its use altogether. Could the characters ever be cast aside? Not for a thousand years - or more."