Yongfen Xin, from Xunxian County of Henan Province, is a professor and doctoral supervisor of Chinese philology, Master's supervisor of linguistics and applied linguistics, and Chinese international education at the School of Chinese Language and Literature, Henan University (HENU). In addition, Xin is a member of the Core Experts Group of China Language Resource Protection Project, Chief Expert of Henan Province, Director of the National Chinese Dialect Association, Director of Henan Provincial Language Association.

Professor Xin participated in a full-time course in Chinese Language at Henan University in 1982 that provided her foundation knowledge of the field. She graduated with first-class honors in 1986. After obtaining her Bachelor's in 1986, Professor Xin started engaging in the education field, working as a teacher at School of Chinese Language and Literature, HENU. Xin’s first-hand experience in the teaching environment led to the decision that she would devote herself to Chinese language education.

From 1996 to 1997, she took the courses of Japan Nagoya University, which gave her a chance to look at the Chinese language from a foreign perspective. The external viewpoints aroused her desire to gain insight into Chinese linguistics, driving her to get enrolled in a 2-year Master's program in Chinese Philology in HENU right after returning to China in 1998. Combining her overseas learning experience and theoretical knowledge from the Master's program, she taught Chinese at Lao National University for three years from 2001.  

Having spent most of her education life in the north of China, Xin decided to travel South for her doctoral study and arrived at the Department of Chinese of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangdong province in 2002. Her final thesis in linguistic and applied linguistics earned her a Ph.D. degree with distinction in 2006.

Her academic excellence earned her a golden opportunity to work and research at HENU Center for Post-doctoral Studies of Chinese Language and Literature from 2007 to 2011, to work as a visiting scholar at the Institute of Languages of the Academy of Social Sciences from 2009 to 2010, to work as a distinguished professor of International Teaching of Chinese at Department of Chinese Studies at Warsaw University, Poland from 2012 to 2014. In addition to teaching and research, Xin hosted two national projects, six provincial and ministerial projects on Chinese language teaching.

Xin's ceaseless effort yielded national recognition. She was awarded First Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Humanities and Social Sciences of Henan Department of Education in 2007, given an Excellent Final Grade for outstanding work in The National Social Science Fund Project' Research on Grammatical Phonology and Typology of Northern Henan Dialect in 2010, and honored with Advanced Individual and Chinese Language Resources Protection Award in 2020.

Her main research fields are Chinese dialects and Teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Some of her research works have been compiled in books, viz. A Comparative Study of Chinese and Japanese Texts published by Henan University Press 2005, Study on the Grammar of Xunxian Dialect by Zhong Hua Book Company 2006) and in more than 20 academic papers published in journals, to name a few, Chinese language, Dialect, Language research, Chinese learning, Journal of Chinese and Journal of Henan University.

(From: College of Chinese Language and Literature)