This study investigated subtypes of developmental dyslexia in Chinese by assessing three cases of Chinese dyslexic children. A battery of screening measures, a character naming and meaning task, and metalinguistic awareness tasks were administered to each child. One of the three children demonstrated characteristics of developmental surface dyslexia, and the other two showed characteristics of developmental deep dyslexia. Moreover, the children's reading problems were found to be specifically related to their deficits in metalinguistic awareness. The dissociation between developmental surface and deep dyslexia provides support to Weekes et al.'s ("Neurocase" 1997; 3: 51-60) model that a semantic and a nonsemantic pathway exist independently in Chinese reading. The results also suggest that deficits in morphological and phonological awareness may cause developmental delays in the semantic and the nonsemantic pathway. (Contains 5 tables.)