Ethnologist Kuo Li-ch'eng, who was just six years old at the time, still recalls the first sentence in their elementary reader, which was written in colloquial Chinese rather than the traditional literary language: "The big dog barks, and the little dog jumps."
民國十二年，北平小學生開始上「新式」學校，當時才六歲的民俗學家郭立誠還記得開蒙學的是白話文：「大狗叫，小狗跳」。