800 bamboo strips rewrite history

 

 

This is like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls

 

Bamboo slips from the Tang Yu Zhi Dao, an ancient text from the Guodian excavation advocating ‘rule by the most meritorious’ and ‘abdication as a means of succession.’ According to Sarah Allan in Buried Ideas, it ‘reflects ideas that were current in the late fifth and early fourth centuries BCE.’

An eighteenth-century painting showing Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty ‘burning all the books and throwing scholars into a ravine’ in order to stamp out ideological nonconformity after the unification of China in 221 BCE. ‘For over two millennia,’ Ian Johnson writes, ‘all our knowledge of China’s great philosophical schools was limited to texts revised after the Qin unification.’ Now a trove of recently discovered ancient documents, written on strips of bamboo, ‘is helping to reshape our understanding of China’s contentious past.’ Illustration from Henri Bertin’s album The History of the Lives of the Chinese Emperors.

Near a river in Guodian, China, not far from a farmhouse made of earth and thatched with straw, Chinese archaeologists in 1993 discovered a tomb dating back to the fourth century B.C.

The tomb was just slightly larger than the coffin and stone sarcophagus within. Scattered on the floor were bamboo strips, wide as a pencil, and up to twice as long. On closer scrutiny, scholars realized they had found something remarkable.

“This is like the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” says Tu Weiming, director of the Harvard Yenching Institute (HYI), who has played a key role in the preservation of, accessibility to, and research on the Guodian materials since 1996.

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The Bear and the Travellers

Two travellers were on a long journey through the countryside. They were walking along a track on the edge of some wood, when, some way ahead of them, they suddenly spotted a great bear ambling towards them. They were not sure whether the bear had seen them, but not wanting to take any risks, the first traveller climbed up the first tree and hid amongst the high branches. The second one dropped his bags and fell to the ground, pretending to be dead. He’d heard somewhere that bears don’t like to eat dead flesh, so he thought this was his safest way to survive.The bear reached the spot where the man was lying on the ground, who was keeping as still as he could, and doing his best to keep his breath in. The bear sniffed around his