Next, let’s visit the second exhibition room. In this room we can get the detailed introduction of the bamboo tablets and wooden slips. Before we visit, I have a question to ask. Do you know whether the words on the bamboo tablets and wooden slips were written or carved on them? With the question, let’s look at the photo of the pottery figurine. This pottery figurine was unearthed in a Western Jin tomb in Jinpenling in Changsha in 1950s. On the left of the photo there is a man handing a wooden slip and reading something, the man on the right who were holding a hair pencil in a hand and a wooden slip in the other was writing something. The pottery figurine shows us the condition of ancients writing on the bamboo tablets and wooden slips. Now, we can say, the word on the bamboo tablets and slips were written on them. Did you guess it?
To see another set of photos. This is a hair pencil unearthed from one of the tombs of the Warring State at Zuojiagong Mountain of Changsha in 1954. Its shaft is long and small but easy to be broken. On the side of it there is a bamboo pipe used for containing the pen when it is collected and preserved. This is an ink stone with little ink blocks near it. Here also remains a bronze chopping knife which is used for the calligrapher to make inscribed bamboo and wooden slips and correct writing mistakes. This is a set of photos of calligraphy tools discovered in No.168 Tomb in Jinan city of former capital of Chu State. In addition to this, there are 6 pieces of wooden slips without character. This is also the most complete and most typical set of Han Dynasty’s stationery ever seen up to now. Uniting our ancient people calculates the number of the inscribed bamboo tablets and wooden slips are not “slice”, but “jin”. It is recorded in history that the 1st emperor of Qin Dynasty did not have a rest until he finished reading over 120 jin of memorial to throne and inscribed bamboo and wooden slips.
Please notice the following brief tablet about information of the inscribed bamboo and wooden slips unearthed from all parts of the nation from this century. Among this, the column in red character is the number of the inscribed bamboo and wooden slips excavated from Changsha this time. The number this time has exceeded the total amount of that unearthed from all parts of the nation these years. Therefore, it is named as “the surprising wonder of the world”and “one of the most important archaeological discoveries of this century.”
It is well known that document history in the Three Kingdom Period handed down is very rare.”The Annals of Three Kingdom”by Chenshou in Xijin has 65 volumes, among which there are 30 volumes of Wei Book, 15 volumes of Shu Book, 20 volumes of Wu Book with total of more than 1 million characters. Over the years, the unearthed inscribed bamboo slips and wooden tablets in nationwide archaeology is also rarely seen and only exist tens of pieces in Anhui, Jiangxi and Hubei .But nowadays in Changsha, the total number of the excavation of the inscribed bamboo from Wu State in Three Kingdom Period reaches 10 thousand pieces for just one time and the total wordage reaches more than 3 million if counted with 20 words in each piece. These character materials greatly surpass the total wordage in that of the “Annals of Three Kingdom”, which offers abundant material for the study of social economy, political system, inscribed bamboo and volume system, history and geography and also fill the vacancy of historic works. We can forecast that the discovery of inscribed bamboo slips from Wu State in Changsha will surely influence many aspects of the Chinese historic study and anew examining and verifying the past final conclusion.
Well, let us have a look at this map. Though the series archaeological excavation around the “Wuyi square ”by our archaeological workers, we have preliminarily defined the region of the ancient Changsha .It extends northward to “Lao Zhaobi ”, southward to “Pozi Street”, eastward to “Cai’e Road”and westward to “Shanghe Street”which shaped rectangle. And the center of Changsha is today’s “Wuyi Square, which, we can say, hasn’t changed basically nearly 3000years.