"Loulan Archaeological Research It's time to listen to the voice of China"

This article is transferred from: China Xiaokang Network

Mr. Hou Can's Loulan Archaeological Report" "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report" finally ushered in the moment of publication.

In 1980, the only archaeological work in Loulan in New China was led by Mr. Hou Can, and in 1987, after several years of immersion in collation and research, the Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report was completed and sent to a famous professional publishing house in Beijing. More than thirty years later, Loulan is still full of legends, and the plundering of Loulan by the great powers can still arouse the patriotic passion of the people, but this archaeological report, which is an important achievement of China's Loulan archaeology, has been sleeping in Mr. Hou Can's bookcase.

In 1987, Mr. Hou Can's work unit was transferred from the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology to Xinjiang Normal University. As a colleague of the Department of History, Mr. Hou Can led me to the research path of Turpan, and because I had the opportunity to consult at any time, I naturally knew a lot about Mr. Hou Can's story.

On November 9, 1987, the publishing house's letter to the Xinjiang Archaeological Research Institute said: "Comrade Hou Can's "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report" compiled by Comrade Hou Can has long been received. The report corrects some of the mistakes of the predecessors and provides some valuable new information and arguments, which will help the academic community to clearly understand the history of Loulan. We have included our press release plans for next year. Thank you to the author and your firm for your support. "Knowing that the report has been included in the plan for next year, Mr. Hou Can's happy mood can be imagined.

More than once, I have personally listened to Mr. Hou Can's affirmation of the importance of Loulan archaeology. Xinjiang archaeology is very important for China, and Loulan is the focus of international attention. The era of Sven Hedin and Stein has passed, and the archaeological research of Loulan should listen to the voice of China. This is the main theme that Mr. Hou Can has emphasized countless times, and as the author of the first archaeological report in Xinjiang, Mr. Hou Can is full of confidence. I am happy for Mr. Hou Can, and I am happy for China.

Mr. Hou Can's good mood lasted only a few months. On March 28 of the following year, the publishing house sent another letter to Mr. Hou Can, which read: "It is understood that the monthly magazine "Cultural Relics" will publish a group of briefing notes on the investigation and excavation of Loulan in the seventh issue of this year, which includes the main contents of the existing "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report". At present, our company is short of paper, and there are many difficulties in publishing, in view of the above situation, the special issue of the Loulan report that was originally planned to be published cannot be borne. Therefore, only the original manuscript of the report can be returned (a separate letter), please check it and pray for more forgiveness. In the future, if Lou Lanru discovers new important harvests, we can also re-study the special issue. Thank you for your great support of our work. ”

The rejection letter is unambiguous. If you refuse at the beginning, the situation will be better. First announced to be included in next year's plan, and then announced the withdrawal of the manuscript, the change is too drastic, the degree of blow is naturally higher. Writing such a rejection letter also requires painstaking effort. The seventh issue of the monthly magazine "Cultural Relics", the publication date is July 29, the three articles are "Loulan Ancient City Site Investigation and Trial Excavation Briefing", "Loulan Suburban Ancient Tomb Group Excavation Briefing" and "Loulan Newly Discovered Wooden Paper Documents Interpretation", because it is in the first group of publications, it is very eye-catching. Archaeological work is followed by briefings and then reports, which is the practice of the archaeological industry. What is often complained about is that after the publication of the archaeological briefing, the archaeological report has been delayed for decades. Mr. Hou Can's work was so rapid, and the briefing and report were completed almost at the same time, which can be regarded as a miracle in the archaeological community. However, it is too cruel to be rejected because of this.

Since then, Mr. Hou has been running around, constantly writing letters, striving for the publication of the loulan archaeological report, and striving to apply for projects to obtain publication funding. Of course, the final results are all the same, and the archaeology reports go into sleep mode. On July 11, 1990, the fourth page of Xinjiang Daily had an article entitled "Difficult to Publish a Book, Difficult to Publish a Book", and also specifically cited Mr. Hou Can's "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report" as an example to illustrate.

In fact, regarding the archaeology of Loulan, Mr. Hou Can has been struggling and working hard. There is too much effort to put in, and it is not easy to forget. In 1994, I went to Beijing to study, and my contact with Mr. Hou Can was mainly based on letters. Knowing that Mr. Hou could not put down Lou Lan, I once suggested that it was better to publish archaeological data in a more popular form than to have no sound, as Stein's "Archaeology of the Western Regions" did. Mr. Hou felt that it was feasible, which was the cause of the manuscript plan of "The Discovery of Lou Lan" that we can see now. During my studies in Beijing, I had a lot of contact with Zhu Yuqi. After yuqi brother left the station, he continued to work at Xinjiang Normal University, not only editing the academic magazine "Western Region Literature and History", but also presiding over the construction of the western region literature and history discipline of the university. He knew that Mr. Hou Can had first-hand information on the archaeology of Loulan, so he actively contacted Mr. Hou, and the two sides finalized the "Loulan Research and Exploration" project, xinjiang normal university funded, and Mr. Hou Can began to study. At that time, Mr. Hou had retired, first settled in Chengdu, and then moved to Shanghai, and the plan he made with Yuqi brothers was to end in 2004 and put into work in the next year. Mr. Hou Can was born in 1936, so far, he is nearly seventy years old, and two years ago he just completed heart bypass surgery, but he is not satisfied with the retirement life of Han Yu Sun, and the distant Loulan is still the concern of the soul.

Now it seems that Lou Lan is destined to become Mr. Hou Can's permanent regret. When he has power, the social environment cannot give him opportunities. Today, the Xinjiang Normal University has sent the opportunity to the door, but Mr. Hou Can is unable to grasp it. He was old and sick. I received limited information, but it was always Mr. Hou's illness that added to this kind of ominous information. Nevertheless, Mr. Hou Can is still making a final effort. In 2012, when Mr. Hou Can sent me the manuscript of the thesis "Western Regions History and Archaeological Research", I actually could not understand that between the collection of papers and the archaeological research of Loulan, in fact, Mr. Hou had already made a choice, and the Loulan research was really unable to complete.

On June 20, 2016, Mr. Hou Can left forever, and he no longer had to break his heart for Lou Lan.

I deeply know that the Loulan archaeological report is Mr. Hou Can's greatest concern, and if there is an opportunity to publish it, it can at least comfort Mr. Hou's spirit in heaven. I seriously asked Yu Zhiyong, director of the Xinjiang Archaeological Research Institute, that Mr. Hou Can was no longer there, could he arrange for the publication of his works before his death? Director Yu said categorically that there was no problem and that it was all funded by the Institute of Archaeology. I called Shanghai, and the news I got was almost bad news—perhaps in a period of pain, Mr. Hou Can's wife, Wu Meilin, said with certainty that there was no such manuscript. I was not only stunned, but also had a terrible imagination: Could it be that Mr. Hou Can was too sad and destroyed the manuscript in one breath? I sat in my chair and almost forgot to hang up the phone.

On June 18, 2019, on the eve of the third anniversary of Mr. Hou Can's death, I seriously wrote an article entitled "Remembering Mr. Hou Can", which was first published in Wen Wei Po ("Wenhui Scholars" on September 20, 2019) in Shanghai, and later edited as a preface to Mr. Hou Can's book "History and Archaeological Research in the Western Regions". At that time, the idea was very clear, and we must record the story of Mr. Hou Can's "Loulan Archaeological Investigation and Excavation Report". After the book was published, Teacher Wu Meilin woke up, and she conducted a comprehensive search throughout the family, and finally found a neatly sealed cowhide pocket and a neat original text and picture.

Teacher Wu's phone call excited me for several days. Professor Zhu Yuqi was even more excited than I was, and immediately decided to publish it in the series of the Huang Wenbi Center of Xinjiang Normal University. On December 17, 2019, on a stormy day, we drove to Shanghai and solemnly accepted Mr. Hou Can's posthumous manuscript "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report".

The "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report" that we saw was a handwritten manuscript, indicating that the date was March 1987. The text is a neat transcription of Teacher Wu Meilin, and there are changes by Mr. Hou Can. It should be a revision after the manuscript was returned from the publishing house, mostly in Chinese, but also in English, with Stein and other articles. It is impossible to imagine that on the one hand, there is no hope of publication, on the other hand, there is constant revision, what kind of mood is Mr. Hou Can in the face of such a book manuscript? After the catalog is the origin, carefully recording the division of labor of the archaeological team, and finally writing that "the collection of materials and the preparation of the report were compiled and written by Comrade Hou Can." This report, which mr. Hou Can painstakingly put into account, turned out to be the result of collective work. At the time of writing the report, some members of the archaeological team had already died, and Mr. Hou did not forget to indicate them one by one. Now, Mr. Hou Can is also a deceased person, when writing the report, he must think of being worthy of his deceased colleagues, not letting them lose the historical record, who knows that in the end, even Mr. Hou Can himself will not have the opportunity to see the publication of this report.

The Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report is an archaeological report that is more than thirty years late and was originally scheduled to be published in 1988. Over the past three decades, China has undergone tremendous changes. The ancient city of Loulan has become a destination for many people to travel by car, and the program of Loulan's academic investigation is often seen on television. But Loulan archaeology, after 1980, has not been carried out again. After Sven Hedin and Stein, the archaeology of Loulan, which belongs to the scientific significance of Chinese scholars, is still the only one. The report written by Mr. Hou Can is still the latest loulan archaeological report.

Originally, it should have been written by the author, but this report went through a rough experience, and in the end, I, a bystander, could only write a text instead of an afterword. Readers are invited to understand the original commission and understand the difficulty of scholarship.

The publication of the "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report", which was finally funded by the Huang Wenbi Center of Xinjiang Normal University and included in the "Huang Wenbi Center Series", seems to be a fate after reincarnation, with a double milestone significance: on the one hand, the "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report" was published by the unit taught by Mr. Hou Can in his later years, which is undoubtedly a milestone for Xinjiang Normal University, a young university of the same age as the reform and opening up, to lead scholarship and establish tradition in the western region of literature and history. More importantly, Mr. Huang Wenbi, who went deep into the Lop Nur area twice in the 1930s, was the first Chinese scholar to engage in archaeological work in this desert, and his "Archaeological Record of Rob Nur" is also the first archaeological report on this area that has attracted the world's attention, although he is mainly engaged in the archaeology of the Han Dynasty site on the north shore of Lop Nur with soil and did not enter Loulan; today, the "Loulan Archaeological Survey and Excavation Report" is published. It is another new milestone in the archaeology of Chinese scholars following Huang Wenbi's Lop Nur Road into the core area of the Loulan site!

(Meng Xianshi, the author is a professor at the National College of Chinese Min University)