The first edition of "Illustration of Collating Characters in Chengzhimeng" was published in 190 1, that is, in the twenty-seventh year of Guangxu in Qing Dynasty. The book has four volumes (eight volumes), 329 1 Chinese characters and 762 illustrations.

The first volume is the index of common cases, common names and search terms; The second volume is the first volume, and the collected Chinese characters include astronomical geography, natural phenomena, mountains and rivers, knowledge of various countries, local chronicles and so on. The third and fourth volumes are the second volume, which contains Chinese characters related to personnel attributes, musical instruments and weapons, flowers, birds, fish and insects, minerals and metals, etc. The fifth and sixth volumes are the third volume.

The collected Chinese characters include weights and measures, daily life, agricultural industry, insects, wild plants and so on. The seventh and eighth volumes are the fourth and last volume, and the collected Chinese characters belong to abstract human activities and languages. At that time, the book was printed and circulated in the form of lithographs, and then it was widely imitated and popularized, becoming a popular teaching material for primary schools and schools all over the country. In the past decades, it has been widely printed, distributed and mixed.

As the first Chinese textbook compiled by the school in history, the spiritual inheritance of this book has directly influenced the later Textbooks of Illustration of Chinese Characters (19 15) and Contemporary Chinese (19 12).

From the late Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China, this hidden clue still exists, which can be described as a model of modern Chinese textbooks, brilliant and self-reliant. This book is still unknown.