The Yunmeng County Museum in Yunmeng county, Central China's Hubei Province Photo: VCG

Before the invention of paper, ancient Chinese recorded important texts on various materials such as tortoise shells, animal bones, and bronzewares. In the Shang Dynasty (c.1600BC-1046BC), bamboo and wooden slips started to prevail as a written material and their dominance lasted until the Jin Dynasty (265-420).   

Serving as a bridge between oracle bone script and bronze inscriptions as well as later paper documents, ­bamboo and wooden slips played a crucial role in the inheritance and ­development of the Chinese civilization.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, has stressed sound ­protection of and in-depth research on ancient bamboo and wooden slips. 

Xi made the remarks during his visit to an exhibition featuring slips dating back to the Qin Dynasty (221BC-206BC) and the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220) at a museum in Yunmeng county, Central China's Hubei Province, on Monday afternoon.

During his visit, Xi learned about the content of the bamboo and ­wooden slips, their historical and cultural value, and the local preservation and research efforts.

Noting that these ancient artifacts are extremely precious and are important, physical evidence that supports China's reliable historical records, Xi urged sound protection of and in-depth research on them.

Treasure unearthed after millennia

The bamboo and wooden slips, known as jiandu in Chinese, were typically bound together with silk or hemp ropes. These slips covered a wide array of fields, such as history, archaeology, and paleography, and documented many aspects of ancient life, including food, clothing, housing, and transportation.

Yunmeng county is rich in cultural relics. A large number of bamboo slips from the Qin and Han dynasties have been unearthed here, with the Qin slips from the Shuihudi site being the most famous. Because of this, Yunmeng is known as the "hometown of jiandu."

The 1970s marked a significant period for bamboo slip discoveries. At the end of 1975, archaeologists excavated 12 tombs from the late Warring States Period (475BC-221BC) to the Qin Dynasty in Shuihudi, and a total of 1,155 bamboo slips were found in Tomb 11, which belonged to a low-ranking official.

The bamboo slips detailed the legal system, local governance, and medical practices of the period. Containing about 40,000 characters, these slips were transcribed by the official during his life and represent the first known documentation of Qin Dynasty laws and administrative systems.

Among them, The Eighteen Types of Qin Laws is the earliest and most complete ancient legal document discovered in China to date. It provides detailed regulations on various aspects from agricultural production to warehouse management, currency, and provisions for the postal system. These legal texts and their underlying principles hold significant value for studying the history of China's ancient legal system.

There was another major find in 2006, when more than 2,000 slips were excavated from a Western Han Dynasty (206BC-AD25) tomb in Shuihudi. Text on the slips indicated that in the early Western Han Dynasty, not only were Qin laws adopted, but the administrative system of prefectures and counties was also continued.

Some of the bamboo slips unearthed at a tomb site in Shuihudi, Yunmeng county, Hubei Province Photo: VCG

Connecting past to present

Jiandu provides essential materials for studying the period's political, economic, military, cultural, and social aspects during the period. In 2021, the Shuihudi tomb site was included among China's top 100 archaeological findings of the last century, archaeologist Zhang Yin, an expert on ancient China's Qin and Han dynasties archaeology, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Without understanding China's continuous historical legacy, it is impossible to comprehend ancient, modern, or future China.

"Archaeology holds great significance in modern society. On the one hand, it helps us understand ancient human lifestyles, social structures, and cultural development, and broaden our knowledge of human history. On the other hand, archaeology plays a crucial spiritual role in reconstructing ancient societies by studying the physical materials, helping preserve and pass down cultural heritage, promoting cultural exchange and understanding, and building cultural confidence," said Zhang. 

Of the world's ancient civilizations, the Chinese civilization has continued uninterrupted to this day, with written records playing an indispensable role. Over 1,000 years, the ancient Chinese culture was recorded and passed on through jiandu.

In 2020, China launched the Project on Paleography and the Inheritance and Development of Chinese Civilization, a comprehensive initiative to study ancient writing and its significance in the evolution of Chinese and global civilization. Supported by this project, the Hubei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology collaborated with the Center of Bamboo Silk Manuscripts at Wuhan University to produce the series Shuihudi Western Han Jiandu to help the general public better understand Chinese culture and history through jiandu. 

A study unveiled earlier in 2024 by the Hubei Provincial Museum released the 3D reconstruction of the owner of Tomb 11 at Shuihudi. The reconstruction provides the public with a more vivid image of the diligent low-ranking official, who recorded history through bamboo slips. 

While jiandu becomes more accessible to the public with the progress of the research, the cultural heritage embodied in jiandu continues to inject vitality into Chinese civilization.