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China's first museum for bamboo slips and wooden tablets is due to be opened at the end of this year in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province.
This museum, covering an area of five hectares, will house more than 100,000 bamboo slips and wooden tablets dating back over 1, 700 years, which have been unearthed in downtown Changsha since October 1996.
The slips and tablets, which were inscribed with characters, recorded in detail the political, economic, military, cultural and geographic situation in the Changsha prefecture which was under the rule of the Wu Kingdom (222 A.D.-280 A.D.), contributing greatly to studies of the society during the Three Kingdoms Period (220 A.D.-280 A.D.).
Ancient Chinese wrote on either wood tablets or bamboo slips, as paper only began to be used in the late Eastern Han Period (25 A.D.-220 A.D.).
To protect these precious cultural relics, the municipal government of Changsha allocated more than 100 million yuan (over US$12 million) to build the museum.
(eastday.com April 18, 2003)
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