This book discusses the methodology of systematic Chinese Dialect classification, with particular attention to the conservative Miin and Hakka groups spoken in southern China. The primary linguistic methodology employed is the historical-comparative method, and the dialects chosen as examples of classification are those spoken in and around the township of Wann'an in western Fukien's Longyan country.

The book features extensive comparative tables of dialect forms, and a two-hundred page appendix outlining the diasystem of the four principal Wann'an dialects.