President Xi Jinping has taken the country’s cultural heritage very seriously and has consistently called for greater preservation efforts. The UNESCO-listed Yinxu Ruins are one of the cultural sites he once visited.
“I have long aspired to come here,” Xi said during his stop at the Yinxu ruins in Anyang, Henan province, on Oct. 28, 2022, where he saw cultural relics such as Chinese artifacts. bronze objects, jade and inscriptions on oracle bones.
“This time, I come here to delve deeper into Chinese civilization so that we can put the afterlife at the service of supply and be inspired by it to better build modern Chinese civilization,” he said.
Xi noted that the inscriptions on the oracle bones preserve evidence of Chinese written language from 3,000 years ago, helping to expand recorded Chinese history to about 1,000 years earlier than previously known. I didn’t think about it before.
Xi then suggested that more emphasis and efforts be put into archaeological studies to advance the task of tracing the origins of Chinese civilization.
“With a long and unbroken history dating back to ancient times, Chinese civilization has shaped our wonderful country, and this country will continue to be wonderful,” he said during his visit.
The Yinxu has been considered the capital of the ancient Shang dynasty (ca. 16th-11th century BC) and is world-renowned for housing oracle bone inscriptions.
Earlier this year, the new construction of the Yinxu Museum opened to the public with approximately 4,000 cultural relics discovered, offering visitors an extraordinary opportunity to appreciate the brilliance of the Shang civilization.