Ruan Xiang's gruelling task of compiling the world's first Hebrew/Chinese dictionary nearly ended in the trashcan.

In fact, if Ruan hadn't made backup copies of his work, he's convinced he would have given the whole project away.

Thankfully, Ruan persevered and his dictionary now sits on bookstore shelves.

Ruan, a 23-year-old university graduate, finished his project in September.

Limited resources for reference pushed the young man to the edge of giving up many times over the past three years.

"I saved many copies of my work on computer disks, flash memory sticks and mail boxes - just to prevent myself from dumping it all on impulse some day," Ruan said.

"The job was so tough that I frequently found myself on the verge of quitting. But, every time, I pulled myself together to continue - finally, I made it."

Graduating from one of the city's top-ranking high schools, Ruan went to Beijing University in 2003 to study foreign languages with relatively small speaking populations in China, such as Arabic, Vietnamese and Hebrew.

Hebrew, the ancient biblical language with a mysterious history, aroused the interest of Ruan, who said he didn't give a second thought before picking the language as a major.

Beijing University was the first Chinese university to set up a Hebrew language department in early 1980s, which will have an intake of no more than 10 students every four years.

"It is natural to have a difficult start in foreign language learning," Ruan said. "But my headache is that I can hardly find anywhere to use and practice Hebrew in daily life."

In the first half year, Ruan said that he frequently found himself down in the dumps, as his major seemed to be of no value in the face of the modern, highly competitive job market.

But his parents encouraged him to delve deeper into academic research.

Previously, there was no Hebrew-Chinese dictionary in either China or Israel where Hebrew has been the official language for decades.

Ruan, a sophomore then, started by setting his eyes on a Hebrew-Chinese dictionary that could facilitate Chinese people's Hebrew studies.

(Shanghai Daily November 19, 2007)