Shaohan Su, a native of Kunming, revised the National Phonetic Alphabet system in his work Yuanlai Ruci by removing duplicate letters, clarifying the pronunciation of confusing letters, supplementing missing letters, and reconstructing the notation system. He reanalyzed the phonetic system using a rime table format with the newly formulated National Phonetic Alphabet to mark initials and finals. Comparison with the modern Kunming dialect shows that the book records the Kunming dialect of the 1920s. The revisions proposed in Yuanlai Ruci are grounded in the Kunming dialect, showcasing how scholars in regional dialect areas, inspired by the National Language Movement in the early Republic of China, actively explored using phonetic symbols to document living speech. The work ingeniously integrates phonetic notation with the traditional method of combining initials and finals in rime tables, a system with origins in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties. This book illuminates the intergenerational connections among rime table theories, phonetic and orthographic reform ideas of the late Qing Dynasty, and the National Phonetic Alphabet Movement. It also serves as a precious historical document for studying Kunming dialect phonology one hundred years ago.