Preparations are proceeding well in constructing the first national museum on Chinese characters in the famous Yin Ruins, where oracle bone inscriptions -- China's earliest writing -- were found, said a local official Monday.

Duan Zhenmei, director of Cultural Relics Department of Anyang city, home to the Yin Ruins, said the will-be-built China Character Museum has won approval from State Cultural Heritage Administration. The site will be in vicinity with the Yin Ruins Museum.

Land requisition and architectural design of the museum are underway, said Duan, adding that upon completion, the museum will be the only national museum dedicated to Chinese characters.

According to plan, the character museum would cover a land area of 20 hectares, with 30,000 square meters of exhibition space. The museum is expected to be completed in three to five years, at a cost of 300 million yuan (about US$36 million).

The decision to build a national character museum came after a proposal submitted in March by 25 members of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the country's top advisory body.The proposal said that Chinese characters were very unique in human civilization and deserved to have such a special national museum for their collection, preservation and exhibition.

The oracle bone inscriptions, the earliest known Chinese characters, date from the late Shang (also called Yin) Dynasty (c.1600-1100 BC). The oracle bones were first discovered in 1899 in Anyang, famous for the Yin Ruins, which are about five hours south by train from Beijing. Since then, more than 150,000 oracle items have been discovered in the Yin ruins, capital of the late Shang Dynasty.

Recording harvests, astronomical phenomena, worship and wars in the Shang Dynasty, the inscriptions on tortoise shells and animal bones from the Yin ruins are scattered around the world.

The ancient script, with its majority as pictographs, is so different in form from the present Chinese writing that a layman can identify no character, neither its meanings.
 
(Xinhua News Agency June 21, 2005)