Hu Pu’an (1878–1947) compiled the Ziyuanxue jiangyi (Course Materials on Theories of Chinese Characters) for the Chinese Language Department of the Commercial Press Correspondence School. This textbook was specifically designed for correspondence students with an educational level equivalent to primary school graduates. Focusing on the Six Principles (Liushu) of Chinese character formation, it employed numbered headings and clear examples, illustrating an endeavor to popularize knowledge of Chinese character studies. This paper utilizes Ziyuanxue jiangyi as the core text and compares it with Hu’s Liushu qianshuo (A Brief Introduction to the Six Principles) and Wenzixue ABC (The ABC of Chinese Grammatology). It explores how he modified the language style and educational content to suit the audience, analyzing the variations in format and knowledge translation strategies across lecture-oriented, popularizationoriented, and correspondence-oriented teaching materials. This paper examines Hu Pu’an’s “scaffolded explanation” process, transitioning from academic to popular formats and subsequently to correspondence education. The “scaffolded” approach refers to content stratification based on varying levels of difficulty and embodies a structured, guided, and systematic knowledge translation. This includes simplifying terminology, incorporating life-like examples, and reorganizing the teaching material structure. Although Ziyuanxue jiangyi is brief and has not been a mainstream focus in academia, this study reveals it as a unique case in the evolution of Chinese language education and Chinese character textbooks during the early Republic of China through textual analysis. Hu’s translation practice fills the gap at the intersection of the history of Chinese character teaching materials and the history of correspondence education, offering historical insights for the popularization of contemporary Chinese character education and possessing interdisciplinary significance.

The monographic study is a targeted and in-depth study of a specific theme. It is an important supplement to the macroscopic description of general history and the microscopic analysis of individual cases, and it serves as an entry point to push the research on the history of learning deeper and more comprehensive. The theory of Chinese character studies is of utmost importance in monographic research. It plays a role in laying the theoretical foundation and defining the disciplinary connotations for the construction of the history of Chinese Grammatology. When researching the theory of Chinese Grammatology, one should “pay more attention to the overall situation and the system, and at the same time, pay attention to the connections and communication with linguistics, as well as archaeology, history, philology, cultural studies, etc., further expand the breadth and depth of the research on character studies, and establish theoretical systems of Chinese character studies with different styles, so that Chinese character studies can have its own discourse system on a world-class platform.” Western research on the theory of Chinese Grammatology involves multiple topics such as “the nature of Chinese characters” “the origin of Chinese characters” “the evolution of Chinese characters” “the ‘liushu’ Chinese Characters” “the structure of Chinese characters” “the pronunciation of Chinese characters” “the classification of Chinese characters” “the dissemination of Chinese characters” “the relationship between characters and words” and “the relationship between Chinese characters and the Chinese language.” Conducting re-research on the relevant studies of Western scholars from the perspective of academic history helps to provide an “other” perspective and a global vision for the research on the theory of Chinese Grammatology in China. This article takes the materials related to the theme of “the dissemination of Chinese characters” in Western Chinese Grammatology as the research object. Through the combination of research overviews and case analyses, it aims to gain a more in-depth understanding and recognition of the focuses, research spots, and research trends that Western scholars pay attention to when studying the dissemination of Chinese characters.

There has been a long history of concern and research on Chinese characters by Western scholars and have achieved fruitful results. According to the current construction of Western Sinology history and the development of Western Chinese Grammatology itself, the history of Western Chinese Grammatology could be divided into five periods: the germination state, the missionary period, the initial stage of specialized Chinese Grammatology in the west, the expansion period of specialized Chinese Grammatology in the west, and the peak period of specialized Chinese Grammatology in the west. The initial stage showed the tendency of specialization, disciplinarity and rationalization. The research subjects included Protestant missionaries, philosophers, politicians and linguists, etc. Systematic research results were obtained in the aspects of characters’ nature, characters’ characteristics, characters’ etymologies, characters’ analysis and characters’ phonology. Under the guidance of comparative linguistics theory, American scholar Peter S. Du Ponceau’s work A Dissertation on the Nature and Character of the Chinese System of Writing has conducted in-depth research and elaboration on the nature and characteristics of Chinese characters, which is representative. This paper attempts to take this work as a representative monograph to describe and analyze from the aspects of research content, thoughts of Chinese characters studies, research methods, academic influence and value, deficiencies and limitations, etc., giving an objective evaluation of its value in the evolution of western Chinese Grammatology in the west.