Bamboo and wooden slips (writing material)

Bamboo
Bamboo
Bamboo is a group of perennial evergreens in the true grass family Poaceae, subfamily Bambusoideae, tribe Bambuseae. Giant bamboos are the largest members of the grass family....

and wooden
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

slips were one of the main media for literacy in early China. The long, narrow strips of wood or bamboo typically carry a single column of brush-written text each, with space for several tens of Chinese characters. For longer texts, many slips may be bound together in sequence with thread. Each strip of wood or bamboo is said to be as long as a chopstick and as wide as two. The earliest surviving examples of wood or bamboo slips date from the 5th c. 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

Shang Dynasty

The Shang Dynasty or Yin Dynasty was, according to traditional sources, the second Chinese dynasty, after the Xia. They ruled in the northeastern regions of the area known as "China proper" in the Yellow River valley...

period (from about 1250 BC). Bamboo or wooden strips were the standard writing material during the Han dynasty

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...

and excavated examples have been found in abundance.
Subsequently, paper

History of paper

Paper was invented by the Chinese by 105 AD during the Han Dynasty and spread slowly to the west via Samarkand and Baghdad. Papermaking and manufacturing in Europe started in Spain and Sicily in the 10th century by the Muslims living there at the time, and slowly spread to Italy and South France...

began to displace bamboo and wooden strips from mainstream uses, and by the 4th c. AD bamboo had been largely abandoned as a medium for writing in China. Bamboo and wooden slips are now no longer used, as they have now been replaced by paper.

Major archaeological finds
Collection	Province	Found	Period
Mozuizi (磨嘴子)	Gansu	1959	Eastern Han
Yinqueshan Han Slips Yinqueshan Han Slips The Yinqueshan Han Slips are ancient Chinese writing tablets, made of bamboo strips and were discovered in 1972. The tablets contain many important writings that were not previously known, and important copies of existing work....	Shandong	1972	Western Han
Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts The Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts are early Chinese texts written on bamboo slips, and are also sometimes called the Yúnmèng Qin bamboo texts. They were excavated in December 1975 from Tomb #11 at Chéngguān Shuìhǔdì , Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, China. The tomb belonged to a Qin administrator....	Hubei	1975	Qin
Shuanggudui Shuanggudui Shuanggudui is an archeological site located near Fuyang in China's Anhui province. Shuanggudui grave no. 1, which belongs to Xiahou Zao , the second marquis of Ruyin , was sealed in 165 BCE in the early Han Dynasty and excavated in 1977...	Anhui	1977	Western Han
Zhangjiashan Han bamboo texts Zhangjiashan Han bamboo texts The Zhangjiashan Han bamboo texts are ancient Han Dynasty Chinese written works dated 196–186 BCE. They were discovered in 1983 by archaeologists excavating tomb no. 247 at Mount Zhangjia of Jiangling County, Hubei Province . The tomb was built for an early Western Han era official who had...	Hubei	1983	Western Han
Fangmatan (放馬灘)	Gansu	1986	late Warring States (Qin Qin (state) The State of Qin was a Chinese feudal state that existed during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods of Chinese history... )
Guodian Chu Slips Guodian Chu Slips The Guodian Chu Slips were unearthed in 1993 in Tomb no. 1 of the Guodian tombs in Jingmen, Hubei. The archeological team suggested the tomb should be dated to the latter half of the Warring States period...	Hubei	1993	mid to late Warring States
Shanghai Museum corpus	Hubei	1994	mid to late Warring States
Zoumalou (走馬樓)	Hunan	1996	Three Kingdoms (Eastern Wu Eastern Wu Eastern Wu, also known as Sun Wu, was one the three states competing for control of China during the Three Kingdoms period after the fall of the Han Dynasty. It was based in the Jiangnan region of China... )
Yinwan (尹灣)	Jiangsu	1997	Western Han
Tsinghua Bamboo Slips	Hunan or Hubei?	2008	mid to late Warring States

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

See also