Bamboo and wooden slips

Bamboo and wooden slips (simplified Chinese: 简牍; traditional Chinese: 簡牘; pinyin: jiǎndú) are long, narrow strips of wood or bamboo, each typically holding a single column of several dozen brush-written characters. They were the main media for writing documents in China before the widespread introduction of paper during the first two centuries AD. (Silk was occasionally used, for example in the Chu Silk Manuscript, but was prohibitively expensive for most documents.)^[1]

Bamboo and wooden slips
Replica of bamboo slips from the Warring States period
Traditional Chinese	簡牘
Simplified Chinese	简牍
Literal meaning	bamboo slips [and] wooden tablets
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin jiǎndú Wade–Giles chien3-tu2 IPA [tɕjɛ̀ntǔ] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization gáan-duhk Jyutping gaan2-duk6 Southern Min Tâi-lô kán-to̍k Middle Chinese Middle Chinese /kˠɛnXduk̚/

A single slip (shown in six parts) from the Shanghai Museum bamboo slips (c. 300 BC), recording part of a commentary on the Classic of Poetry

An 18th-century edition of The Art of War made with bamboo strips

Each strip of wood or bamboo is said to be as long as a chopstick and as wide as two, with space for several tens of visually complex ancient Chinese characters arranged in a single column. For longer texts, many slips were sewn together with hemp, silk, or leather and used to make a kind of folding book, called jiǎncè or jiǎndú.^[2][3]

The earliest surviving examples of wood or bamboo slips date from the 5th century BC during the Warring States period. However, references in earlier texts surviving on other media make it clear that some precursor of these Warring States period bamboo slips was in use as early as the late Shang period (from about 1250 BC). Bamboo or wooden strips were the standard writing material during the Han dynasty and excavated examples have been found in abundance.^[4] Subsequently, the improvements made to paper by Cai Lun during the Han dynasty began to displace bamboo and wooden strips from mainstream uses, and by the 4th century AD bamboo had been largely abandoned as a medium for writing in China.

The custom of interring books made of the durable bamboo strips in royal tombs has preserved many works in their original form through the centuries. An important early find was the Jizhong discovery in 279 AD in a tomb of a king of Wei, though the original recovered strips have since disappeared. Several caches of great importance have been found in recent years.

Major collections

Collection	Province	Found	Period
Old Juyan slips	Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region	1930	Western Han[5][6]
Changtai Guan slips	Henan	1956	Warring States [7]
Mozuizi (磨嘴子)	Gansu	1959	Eastern Han
Yinqueshan Han Slips	Shandong	1972	Western Han
New Juyan slips	Gansu	1972–74	Western Han[7][6]
Ding County slips	Hebei	1973	Western Han [7]
Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts	Hubei	1975	Qin
Fuyang Han slips	Anhui	1977	Western Han[7]
Shuanggudui
Shangsun Jiazhai Han slips	Qinghai	1978	Han[7]
Zhangjiashan Han bamboo texts	Hubei	1983	Western Han
Fangmatan	Gansu	1986	late Warring States (Qin)
Wangjiatai Qin Slips	Hubei	March 1993	Qin[7]
Guodian Chu Slips		1993	mid to late Warring States
Shanghai Museum bamboo slips		1994
Zoumalou bamboo slips	Hunan	1996	Three Kingdoms (Eastern Wu)
Yinwan (尹灣)	Jiangsu	1997	Western Han[8]
Chinese University of Hong Kong slips		2001	Han/Eastern Jin[7]
Qin Slips of Liye	Hunan	2002	Qin dynasty
Tsinghua Bamboo Slips	Hunan or Hubei?	2008	mid to late Warring States
Hebosuo Bamboo Slips	Yunnan	2023	Han dynasty[9]

In 1930, the Sino-Swedish Expedition excavated ten sites in the Juyan Lake Basin and unearthed a total of 10,200 wooden slips dating to the Western Han, a cache that came to be known as the "old Juyan texts".^[5][6][10] In 1937, after the Second Sino-Japanese War began, Chung-Chang Shen transported these wooden slips from Beijing to the University of Hong Kong.^[11][12][13] Another 20,237 slips were excavated between 1972 and 1976 by the Juyan Archaeological Team, Gansu. These slips are held by the Provincial Museum of Gansu and came to be known as the "new Juyan texts".^[6]

The Shanghai Museum corpus was purchased in Hong Kong the year after the Guodian tomb was excavated, and is believed to have been taken by graverobbers from a tomb in the same area. The Tsinghua collection was donated by an alumnus who purchased it through auction, with no indication of its origin. The others were archaeologically excavated.

Accoutrements

One accoutrement used when writing on bamboo slips was a small knife which would be used to scrape away mistakes and make amendments. Decorated knives became a symbol of office for some officials indicating their power to amend and change records and edicts.

See also

• Bamboo Annals
• Bamboo tally
• Changsha Jiandu Museum
• Chu Silk Manuscript
• Mawangdui Silk Texts
• Oracle bone
• Mokkan, wooden tablets used as writing media in Japan and Korea

References

1. 張彥 (2018-06-21). "寫於2300年前的《楚帛書》如何流落到了美國？" [How did the Chu Silk Manuscript, written 2,300 years ago, get to the United States?]. The New York Times (in Chinese). Retrieved 2019-09-16.
2. Perkins, Dorothy (1998). Encyclopedia of China: History and Culture. Routledge. p. 24. ISBN 978-157958110-7.
3. Lyons, Martyn (2011). Books: A Living History. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications. p. 18. ISBN 9781606060834.
4. Loewe, Michael (1997). "Wood and bamboo administrative documents of the Han period". In Edward L. Shaughnessy (ed.). New Sources of Early Chinese History. Society for the Study of Early China. pp. 161–192. ISBN 1-55729-058-X.
5. Hedin, Sven Anders. "History of the Expedition in Asia, 1927–1935 Reports from the Scientific Expedition to the North-Western Provinces of China under the Leadership of Dr. Sven Hedin : The Sino-Swedish Expedition".
6. ChinaKnowledge.de – An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History, Literature and Art. "Juyan Hanjian 居延漢簡, the Han-Period Texts of Juyan".
7. Guo, Qiyong; D'Ambrosio, Paul (2018). Studies on Contemporary Chinese Philosophy (1949–2009). Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004360495_015. ISBN 978-90-04-36049-5.
8. Loewe, Michael (November 2001). "The Administrative Documents from Yinwan: A Summary of Certain Issues Raised". Archived from the original on 2012-04-03.
9. Altuntaş, Leman (2023-03-30). "2,000-year-old bamboo slips discovered in Yunnan". Arkeonews. Retrieved 2023-04-02.
10. Shen, Yaming (2022). "The "Arks" that C.C. Shen Used to Rescue Juyan Han Wooden Slips: From Peking to Tientsin" (PDF). Disquisitions on the Past & Present (39): 189–212 – via Institute of History & Philology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.
11. Shen, Yaming (2023). C.C. Shen and Juyan Han Wooden Slips: From Peking to Tientsin (Shen zhongzhang yu juyan han jian cong beiping dao tianjin) 《沈仲章与居延汉简：从北平到天津》 (in Chinese). Shanghai: Zhongxi Book Company. ISBN 9787547520628.
12. China Central Television (CCTV) (2022). "They Live Forever, Season 2, Episode 4".
13. Peking University, School of Archeology and Museology. "Chronicle Memorabilia 1937". "After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, C.C. Shen of the Liberal Arts Research transported the Juyan Han Wooden Slips that belonged to the Northwest Scientific Expedition Group to the University of Hong Kong."