A general microwave electron gun (rf gun) theory and some new ideas about further reducing the emittance of electron beams are reviewed and introduced briefly. Experimental results are presented from a thermionic cathode rf gun which has been developed for Beijing Free‐Electron Laser Project (BFELP) at Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP), Academia Sinica as the injector of 30 MeV constant gradient linac. LaB6is used as the thermionic emitter with 100 crystal surface and the temperature around 1620 °C. Back bombardment heating effect and another effect connected with the cathode surface temperature was observed. An electron beam with macropulse length 4 &mgr;s, repetition rate 12.5 Hz, greater than 500 mA beam current during macropulse and around 1 MeV maximum energy has been obtained. In the last section of this article, two useful formulas used to determine electric field distribution near the cathode surface and coupling coefficient &bgr; of a rf gun are introduced.