Abstract: The Database of Overseas Life-Writing on Modern Chinese People is dedicated to the collection of life writing materials of various forms, languages, and subjects from across the world. Now updated to version 5.0, this database determines the scope of collection, methods of search and structural architecture on the basis of the experience of a number of similar databases. We attempt to explore text mining in depth and intend to forge a database of life-writing materials of Chinese people from across the world.

*This paper is an initial report based on the major project “Compilation and Research of Overseas Life–Writing on Modern Chinese People” (IN. 11&ZD138) sponsored by the National Social Science Foundation of China.

Key words: Life-writing on modern Chinese people, database text mining

Liu Jialin, Professor in the Department of Chinese Language and Literature at the School of Humanities, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is the deputy director of SJTU Center for Life Writing. He has published Nabokov’s Poetic World (2012) , translated Vladimir Nabokov: the Russian Years (2009) and Vladimir Nabokov: the American Years (2011), and co-edited Dictionary of Foreign Biographies for Appreciation (2009).