As a special type of script sign, the huaya (personal cipher or stylized signature) is ubiquitous in Chinese contracts. While ethnic communities in southwest China adopted the well-developed Han contractual format, they also imported these highly individual ciphers. Because most local parties had only a limited command of written Chinese, the original cursive signatures quickly evolved into non-lexical marks that no longer contained the signer’s name. Executed in simpler strokes and highly variable shapes, such marks could differ from one contract to another even for the same person, and one and the same mark might be used by several different individuals. Consequently, the huaya’s capacity to distinguish one signer from another was greatly weakened.

As a result of the National Social Science Foundation Project hosted by Professor Zhao Hong for several decades, the Dictionary of the Non-Classical Word in Turpan Manuscripts was published by Shanghai Ancient Books Publishing House in December 2019 after long expectations. As for the form of a dictionary, it draws out the non-classical word in Turpan Manuscripts, and collects extensive materials. Furthermore, the practice of writing is fine and appropriate, and the collected glyphs are also full and rich. So, it shows us the whole appearance of using the non-classical word among the people in Turpan. It is a classic of this international study——Turpan Studies. This paper briefly introduces the dictionary’s practice, features, value and some shortcomings so that scholars can understand the dictionary better.