"Essentially I have just taken the Shuowen’s data on the components for each character and run it through a program to generate the trees implied by this data. I have then translated the explanations from the Shuowen and from later commentaries by traditional Chinese sources for each character, and added character and word definitions. The dictionary does not contain original research, but rather it is a demonstration that computerized cross-referencing now makes it possible to more fully implement Xu Shen’s original vision for Chinese lexicography. I hope that other printed and electronic dictionaries will similarly be designed to further his vision.

Note that this website was created in 1996 before standard browsers could display Chinese characters, so instead images are used for all of the Chinese characters. I apologize that this makes it impossible to copy and paste from the website. "