Root-searching and Ancestral Inquiring Tour to the Ancient Capitals of Central Plains

Author: Hong'an Li
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-08-01
Features: During the Shang Dynasty, settlements where people lived together were called "yi," meaning city-states. The capital differed from ordinary city-states in that it contained a ancestral temple, which symbolized the highest power of the Shang Dynasty. Zhengzhou was the capital of King Zhongding of the Shang Dynasty 3,600 years ago, but this capital was buried in the sands of history due to the great upheavals over thousands of years. When the face of the Shang Dynasty capital reappeared in the eyes of Zhengzhou people, it was already the early 1950s.
For Han Weizhou, a primary school teacher in Zhengzhou, the golden autumn of 1950 was a day of harvest, and an unexpected one at that.
In addition to teaching, Han Weizhou was deeply passionate about archaeology. At that time, he often went to the Lianggang area in the southern suburbs of Zhengzhou, collecting abandoned objects like treasure, for observation and research. Once, while collecting in Lianggang, he found some pottery fragments and small stone tools. The pottery had cord markings, and the stone tools were polished smooth. He examined them repeatedly, his eyes shining as if he were communicating with these broken pieces and rough stones. In his history of loving archaeology, he had never seen or felt anything like this. To verify the reality of this extraordinary discovery, he could not delay and sent the pottery fragments and stones to the cultural relics department of Zhengzhou for scientific identification.
The results were in: the cord-marked pottery fragments and polished stone tools that Han teacher had found were confirmed to be relics of the Shang Dynasty, dating back over 3,500 years.
The news spread like wildfire. In the field of cultural relics and archaeology, it was no different from hearing an atomic bomb explode. Many archaeologists' eyes turned toward Zhengzhou, toward Zhengzhou's Shang Dynasty relics. As a result, numerous experts, scholars, and archaeologists began the work of searching for the traces of this dynasty. In October 1952, the Ministry of Culture, Peking University, and the Institute of Archaeology held a training course for archaeologists, with the Shang Dynasty relic site of Zhengzhou becoming their field practice site. During the practical excavation, many more Shang Dynasty relics were unearthed. The face of the Shang Dynasty capital gradually became clearer.