We describe a novel approach to detecting empty categories (EC) as represented in de-pendency trees as well as a new metric for measuring EC detection accuracy. The new metric takes into account not only the position and type of an EC, but also the head it is a dependent of in a dependency tree. We also introduce a variety of new features that are more suited for this approach. Tested on a sub-set of the Chinese Treebank, our system im-proved significantly over the best previously reported results even when evaluated with this more stringent metric. 1