The Paper learned that recently, under the guidance of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the Propaganda Department of the Shanghai Municipal CPC Committee, the director group and film crew of the large-scale archaeological and cultural documentary "Why China" produced by the Oriental Satellite TV Center of Shanghai Radio and Television Station drove to the scene of the Lingjiatan site for filming.
Cultural relics excavated from the Lingjiatan site
The film crew of the documentary "Why China" walked into the Lingjiatan site
Based on the major research results and latest discoveries of the "Chinese Civilization Exploration Project" and "Archaeological China", the documentary "Why China" traces back to the Neolithic Era from the Qin and Han Dynasties, explores the roots of the ancient Chinese civilization with flashback techniques, and answers the big proposition of "Why China" about history and the future.
"Why China" is composed of Mr. Yan Wenming, a tycoon in the field of Chinese archaeology, as the general consultant of the program, Qin Ling, professor of the School of Archaeology and Literature of Peking University, as the academic chief producer, and Gan Chao as the general director, and also invited outstanding archaeologists, historians and leaders of important site archaeology teams such as Peking University, Xida University, Fudan University, and the Academy of Social Sciences to join the expert team, realizing the strongest expert gathering in the field of Qin and Han archaeology, Xia Shang Zhou archaeology, and Neolithic archaeology. Experts expect that "Why China" can use the innovation of "image culture" to show the achievements of "archaeological culture" and use the story of "ancient China" to tell the story of "youth China".
The launch site of the 2021 "Why China" project launch conference and expert seminar
According to reports, the documentary will be divided into two seasons. The first season of "Why China" traces the foundation, origin and early formation and development of China as a civilized country with longitudinal time as a clue; The second season of "What is China" comprehensively shows the genes of civilized China and the deep inheritance of ancient China and modern China from the perspectives of social culture, economy, technology, philosophy, religion and art. At present, the themes of the programs proposed in the first season of "Why China" are: Qin and Han Empire, Homeland and Heaven, Yixia Debate, Yin Shang Dynasty, Earliest China, Ancient Kingdom Era, Starry Sky Bucket, cradle of civilization.
Li Xinwei, academic adviser of the documentary and researcher of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, previously said that the film was made to use the latest archaeological data, combined with documentary records, to answer the question of "why China" and tell how China, a unified country with pluralism, was formed. China is a very unique country, some scholars call it "the civilization disguised as the country", which is very reasonable, because our country is different from the so-called "nation-state" advocated by Western scholars, it is a multi-ethnic group gathered as the "Chinese nation", under the guidance of the core culture, into the historical period, and also under the impetus of the powerful central government, jointly create, continue and develop the civilization of Chinese civilization. How did such a complex of nations and civilizations, or "civilized states," come into being? There is still a lot of debate. On the one hand, in the ancient historical records, during the Yellow Emperor period of the legendary era, such a state has been formed. On the other hand, some scholars have tried to deconstruct the concept of "China" in historical research, arguing that our China is nothing more than an "imaginary community" formed in modern times. To answer this important question, archaeological research needs to be relied upon. The combination of rich archaeological discoveries and documents can already paint a magnificent picture of the origin of Chinese civilization and the formation of "China" that shocks us and makes us proud. Our documentary is to show the latest research results and tell everyone that China is not an "imaginary community" that exists in modern times, Chinese civilization was formed more than 5,000 years ago, and the prototype of China now, which can be called the "original China" cultural community, also appeared at that time. The pluralistic interaction between the various regions in the "original China" promoted the process of regional integration and gave birth to the ideal of building this cultural community into a political system, which finally became a reality during the Qin and Han dynasties through the continuous practice of the Xia and Shang dynasties.
He believes that this is a very unique path of formation and development of civilized states, and civilizations in other parts of the world have tried it, but they are all fleeting. Only China has achieved the success of building a pluralistic and integrated civilizational state, and from this point of view, our Chinese civilization is the only civilization in the world that has lasted for more than 5,000 years.