t has been six years since Steven Hansen first set foot in Beijing. Now he will return to his hometown Minnesota at the end of this month.

“You can say we screwed it up,” said Hansen, with his Beijing flavored English.

Years ago, Hansen founded a website called “Phonemica” to record spoken stories in various Chinese dialects, which arouse large amount of reports and curiosity: why is an American engaged in protecting Chinese dialects?”

“We are just conserving, rather than protecting,” he corrects the wording prudently.

In early 2009, amazed by the variety of dialects in Beijing, he put recorded Beijing dialects and analysis on a blog named “dialect of Beijing”, which is popular in Beijing's foreign community.

Then Kellen Parker, an American student in Shanghai who is interested in Shanghai dialect, found the blog and advised Hansen to collect Chinese dialects.

They decided to found the web, which was named as Phonemica by Kellen’s Chinese teacher Leo, originated from a poem by He Zhizhang: I left home young and not till old do I come back; my accent is unchanged, my hair no longer black.

“Why would we do this web? We want to show the beauty of Chinese dialects and a greatness of the dialect map,” Hansen said on a speech at the Shanghai Modern Art Museum in 2013.

The initial goal of Phonemica was to become the China version of Speech Accent Archive, an America web where different people read same materials to identify the sound differences. However, they found the American model not applicable to Chinese dialects, which differ not only in sound, also in wording and grammar.

They referred to another American web Storycrops.org, which allows ordinary people telling their stories. Then they originated the dialect map, putting colorful pins on map to show various dialects.

In April 2013,Phonemica went on line, with 45 sound records and 75 registered users, mostly their Chinese friends.  In March 2015, there are over 500 records on Phonemica, ranging from histories, confessions of love to folk tales.

Reported by The Wall Street Journal in June 2013, Phonemica become overnight famous and received many media attentions for about half a year.

“I don’t want to entertainment public,” said Hansen, “although entertainment programs can bring attention to the web, we don’t need it.”

“I hope it’s a hobby, instead of a job”, he added.

However, mere hobby couldn’t afford the web.

The last update of Phonemica was in October 2014. Hansen hasn’t logged in the web for four months from now.

The Phonemica had only organized one fundraising activity in America and collected thousands of dollars to purchase computers and voice recording equipment. They also asked for corporations with portals and celebrities but were all in vain.

Another problem Hansen faced with is the doubt of their purpose and motivation of selecting Chinese dialects as Americans. Many people worried the behavior would endanger the military secrets.

Kellen admitted that it would be tough in the next.

“But I think we will be back as we have stayed in China for such a long time,” said him.

However, Hansen has been tired of Beijing where there are full of noise, crowd and haze.

Finishing the interview, he went to bank to unsubscribe account. He was ready to return to the gloomy Minnesota, as an ordinary American.