Kui is a polysemous figure in ancient Chinese mythology. Classic texts use this name for the legendary musician Kui who invented music and dancing; for the one-legged mountain demon or rain-god Kui variously said to resemble a Chinese dragon, a drum, or a monkey with a human face; and for the Kuiniu wild yak or buffalo.

A Chinese–English Dictionary: Compiled for the China Inland Mission by R. H. Mathews or Mathews' Chinese–English Dictionary, edited by the Australian Congregationalist missionary Robert Henry Mathews (1877–1970), was the standard Chinese–English dictionary for decades. Mathews originally intended his dictionary to be a revision of Frederick W. Baller's out-of-print An Analytical Chinese–English Dictionary, but ended up compiling a new dictionary. Mathews copied, without acknowledgment, from the two editions of Herbert Giles's A Chinese–English Dictionary.