Zhang Yang

    nicolezyyy@163.com

    DENG GUICHENG remembers Sept. 11, 2001, not because of the terror attacks in New York, but because the day marked a turning point in his life.

    “I quit my job as a construction worker and joined a software company on that day,” said Deng, an exhibitor in the Inventor area of the 17th China Hi-Tech Fair.

    The 48-year-old is the inventor of a Chinese character-input software that enables users to input Chinese by writing a character’s components on a board. The software also shows Chinese idioms and poems when users type certain characters.

    The software has been praised by seniors because it helps elderly Chinese who never learned how to type pinyin.

    Deng knew nothing about computers before he joined the Shenzhen-based software company. The company developed a popular Wubi input method, which is based on a character’s shape instead of its pronunciation.

    As Deng learned more about character-input software, he wondered why there wasn’t an input method combining pinyin and Wubi.

    He started working on his own software in 2003 with his wife, who was also an employee at the company. They spent two years deconstructing over 40,000 Chinese characters to design a more user-friendly input method. The software debuted in 2006, and Deng called it the Sanbi input method.

    It’s the ninth year that Deng has attended the China Hi-Tech Fair displaying his invention. He founded his own company last year.

    Although the software has brought Deng notice and praise from officials and academics, it hasn’t made him rich.

    “I’m selling the software and handwriting boards online, and the earnings are just enough for me to scrape by,” he said.

    Deng has been selling the software on Taobao since 2013. Buyers can purchase his software for 118 yuan (US$18.49) and the software plus a handwriting board for 168 yuan.

    Even though the software didn’t make Deng rich, he isn’t upset. “People live a happier life if they are working on things that interest them,” he said.

    Dozens of inventors like Deng displayed gadgets in the high-tech fair’s inventor section this year.