Li Fanwen

Li Fanwen 李范文
Born	November 1932 Xixiang County, Shaanxi, China
Citizenship	China
Known for	Dictionary of the Tangut language
Awards	Wu Yuzhang Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences (2002)
Scientific career
Fields	Linguistics
Institutions	Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Academic advisors	Luo Fuyi (羅福頤)

Li Fanwen (simplified Chinese: 李范文; traditional Chinese: 李範文) (born November 1932) is a Chinese linguist and Tangutologist.

Li Fanwen was born in Xixiang County, Shaanxi in 1932. After leaving school, he worked for several years before going to Beijing to study Tibetan at the Central College for Nationalities, from which he graduated in 1956. He stayed on at the college as a research student in the History department until he graduated in 1959. By this time, he had become fascinated with the extinct and only semi-deciphered Tangut script, and in 1960 he decided to move to Yinchuan in Ningxia, the former capital of the Tangut Empire, to devote himself to Tangut studies, but his wife was unwilling to accompany him, so they divorced.

When Li Fanwen arrived at Ningxia, he was disappointed to find that there were no opportunities to study the Tangut script and language, and instead he was assigned to Ningxia Education College to research the Hui people. Two years later, he was reassigned to the Ningxia Museum and he was finally able to dedicate himself to the study of Tangut history and language. He was sent by the museum to participate in a minor capacity in the excavations of the Western Xia tombs at the foot of the Helan Mountains, and whilst his new wife (Yang Shende 楊慎德) and children stayed behind at Yinchuan, he lived and worked at the excavations for seven years. The conditions were harsh, and the rations meagre, so that at the end of seven years, he had become emaciated and very ill, but his wife nursed him back to health.

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