Liye Qin Records: A Slip in Time

There is a message from National Treasures. Please check it. The year is 2018, and another of China's National Treasures is about to spill its secrets. Liye Chin Slips are held in their own Liye Chin Slips Museum in Hunan Province. The wooden slips look inconspicuous, but hidden in the blurred characters It describes the life of a county under the Qin Dynasty in the late 3rd century BC. In June 2002, the discovery of over 37,400 slips in an ancient well in Liye, Hunan Province, excited the world. This is the record of a family that lived 2,200 years ago. The householder was Zhang Buboa, and given the title of Bugeng, which exempted him from corvée service. He had a wife called You, and their son was called Zao She. It's an example of early imperial bureaucracy. Wu Cao from Hanxianli in Handan. He has yellow skin, elliptical face, and is about 170 centimeters tall. In 23 characters, it introduces us to Wu Cao from Hanxianli in Handan. With the slip, Wu Cao could avoid his identity being stolen. Officials could also use it as census data. Although Wu's body is long turned to dust, this wooden slip has preserved his appearance for millennia. After Qin Shi Huang united his empire, he imposed a system of prefectures and counties. There were more than 40 prefectures in total. Dongting Prefecture's county was, in all respects, unremarkable amongst them. The officials here were typical bureaucrats of their time. The Liyaqin slips are the day-to-day record of their government work. Most of the slips relate to life in the Qin Dynasty after Qin Shi Huang united the warring states. They cover events and affairs on a daily and monthly basis, from 221 BC to 209 BC. Each slip is the record of an event. It's a model of how the Qin administrative system worked. The over 37,000 pieces of slips are an encyclopedia of county life in the Qin Dynasty. They cover subjects including postal communication, the administrative organization system, trade, arithmetic, daily events, and festivals. It's a panorama of the operation of a Qin county under the system of prefectures and counties. In 219 BC, the death rate of corvée service personnel in the county reached an alarming one in seven. In 215 BC, the county's warehouse manager sold the last 15 liters of wine to a man called Cheng. In the same year, there were 55,534 households in Xianling, and there are even three pieces of one of the oldest multiplication tables discovered to date. There are less than 1,000 words in the official dynastic records about the administrative system and social life under the Qin. However, the 200,000 characters of the Liyaqin slips vastly expand on this vacuum. The lives of the officials and subjects of the early empire live on in these 37,000 slips. They are truly a shining treasure house of history.