2,300-year-old Chinese silk manuscripts return home after nearly eight decades abroad

2300年历史的中华丝绸文献在海外漂泊近八十年后重返故里

Special English

2025-10-20

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  • Two volumes of Chinese silk manuscripts dating back about 2,300 years.

  • have been returned to central China, 79 years after they were smuggled out of the country,

  • through cooperation between Chinese and U.S. cultural institutions.

  • The second and third volumes of the Xi Dan Ku silk manuscripts precious cultural artefacts dating back to the warring states period from 475 BC to 221 BC have been officially repatriated to Hunan province.

  • They will be permanently archived in the Hunan Museum in Changsha, the provincial capital.

  • The manuscripts,

  • which were unearthed from a Chu state tomb by tomb raiders at the Zidane Ku site in Changsha in 1942,

  • consist of three volumes.

  • Wuxing Ling and Gongshou Zhen.

  • They are a systematic record of astronomy, calendars,

  • cosmology, and military divination from China's pre-Qin period.

  • The silk manuscripts are the earliest examples of silk text discovered to date,

  • and the oldest classical Chinese book in the true sense.

  • They were smuggled out of China in 1946.

  • Rao Chuan, head of the National Cultural Heritage Administration,

  • said that the return of the manuscripts is a significant achievement of years of Sino-U.S.

  • cultural and museum cooperation and an example for international cooperation on artifact restitution.