Nostalgia for the | Liangzhu Ancient City ruins selected into the textbook, Yu Shihou's rush

□ Chen Shoutian

(Second-level inspector of the management committee of Hangzhou Liangzhu Ruins Management Area)

Due to my work relationship, I participated in the work of including the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City in the compilation of the national unified compilation of the "Chinese History" textbook.

"Five thousand years of Chinese civilization" is a concept we knew when we were young. However, many people in the world do not think that the history of Chinese civilization is as long as five thousand years. The reason is that in the international context, there is a "standard" for civilization, and it must be "empirically proven" through archaeological excavations. Before the value of the Liangzhu site was discovered, only the oracle bones of the Yin Ruins and the bronzes of the Yin Shang Era represented "the earliest civilization in China", and many Western scholars believe that the earliest civilization in China originated in the Shang Dynasty, about 3500 years ago. Since the 1980s, the new archaeological discoveries of the liangzhu ancient city site have changed the view of the academic community, and well-known archaeologists at home and abroad have expressed their views, acknowledging that the Liangzhu society 5300 years ago has entered the early stage of national civilization, and the Liangzhu site is not only In China, but also in the entire East Asian region. In particular, the liangzhu ancient city site has been successfully included in the World Heritage List, marking that the Liangzhu site is recognized not only by the international academic community, but also by international intergovernmental organizations as an empirical evidence of China's 5,000-year civilization history. This is also the academic basis for the national unified compilation of the "Chinese History" textbook to record the Liangzhu ruins as an empirical record of China's civilization history of more than 5,000 years. Since then, the Liangzhu site has really "rewritten chinese history."

So, how did the Liangzhu site enter the Chinese History textbook? To make a long story short, it is a long and arduous process, and it has gone through a full 10 years of tortuous experiences, which can be described as hard-won.

With the continuous deepening of archaeological research, the Hangzhou Liangzhu Site Management Committee began to attach importance to the work of compiling archaeological research conclusions into the textbook of "Chinese History". Before 2011, Wu Liwei, deputy director of the Hangzhou Liangzhu Ruins Management Committee, and other comrades had been working hard for the Liangzhu ruins to enter the "Chinese History" education department, but for various reasons, they only won the mention of "Liangzhu Yuqun" in the relevant chapters.

In February 2012, as soon as I was transferred to the Liangzhu Ruins Management Committee in Hangzhou, Comrade Wu Liwei suggested that I participate in this matter. I also felt that this matter was very important and meaningful, so from then on, until 2019, when the Liangzhu site entered the national unified compilation of Chinese History textbooks in a full page, I participated in it for a full 8 years.

Later, Comrade Wu Liwei was transferred to work in other units, and I took over this job from him. At the beginning, there was no progress, no good path could be found, just "blind busy". Later, my colleague Xie Guoqi, deputy director of the office of the Liangzhu Ruins Management Committee, told me, "There was a former professor at Hangzhou University, Yu Shihou, who had a student, Zhang Tingkai, who was an assistant editor-in-chief at the People's Education Publishing House, and was specifically in charge of the revision of the national unified compilation of the "Chinese History" textbook." I was so happy to hear this news. Because, when I took the self-study exam for higher education at Hangzhou University, Professor Yu Shihou was the teacher who taught us "Formal Logic".

Remainder thickness (1938-2022)

Soon, I invited Teacher Yu to my office. As soon as Teacher Yu entered the door, I explained the original committee directly and strongly asked Teacher Yu to "help the students". Teacher Yu was a warm-hearted person, and he happily agreed to my request and immediately said that he would "do his best to support me." After a few days, I couldn't wait to fly to Beijing with Teacher Yu, Xie Guoqi and others. If this matter had not been particularly important, I would not have let Teacher Yu, who is nearly 80 years old, fly to Beijing with hard work. As soon as we got off the plane, we rushed straight to the People's Education Publishing House and successively visited Teacher Yu's students--Zhang Tingkai, then assistant editor-in-chief of the People's Education Publishing House, Qu Lindong, editor-in-chief of the textbook "Chinese History", Ye Xiaobing, deputy editor-in-chief, Yu Guiyuan, director of the editorial office, and other relevant comrades. We told them over and over again about the importance of the Liangzhu site and implored them to write it into the national textbook "History of China".

At first, they did not know much about the Liangzhu ruins, but after listening to our introduction, they finally agreed to "go to the Liangzhu ruins first."

Not long after, at the invitation of the Liangzhu Ruins Management Committee, Qu Lindong, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Ye Xiaobing, and Professor Yu Shihou came to Liangzhu to investigate. It should be said that this special investigation has completely changed the understanding of the value of the Liangzhu site by the national unified history textbook writing team. "It's great, it's shocking. The Liangzhu site is indeed a sacred place that empirically proves the history of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years, and it should indeed be written into Chinese history textbooks. Qu Lindong editor-in-chief said.

After returning to Beijing, The editor-in-chief Qu Lindong quickly convened relevant experts for discussion. Since none of the historians involved in the examination and approval of history textbooks at that time were engaged in archaeology, they did not know about archaeological discoveries of great value as the Liangzhu site. As a result, my colleagues and I went to Beijing many times to "argue with reason." In the years since, we have successively visited the Textbook Bureau of the Ministry of Education, the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Peking University, Beijing Normal University, and the People's Education Publishing House, and visited Zhang Zhongpei (former president of the Chinese Archaeological Society and former president of the Palace Museum), Yan Wenming (tenured professor of the Institute of Archaeology and Literature of Peking University), Wang Wei (member of the Faculty of The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Zhao Hui (senior professor of the Institute of Archaeology and Literature of Peking University), Chen Xingcan (director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences) and other well-known archaeologists. He painstakingly explained the reasons and tried to win their academic support. In this difficult process, Professor Yu Shihou, who is more than eighty years old, flew back and forth to Beijing and Hangzhou dozens of times, each time without falling, and each time he flew in a hurry, and flew back to Hangzhou in a hurry to do a good job.

I was really touched by Mr. Yu's feelings of home and country.

On 6 July 2019, at the 43rd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Conference in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City were successfully inscribed on the World Heritage List. The next morning, my group and I prepared to leave the Azerbaijani airport for a visit to Ukraine. When I was walking to the door of the Azerbaijan Customs, I suddenly received a trans-oceanic call from Beijing, and there was an exciting good news coming from the other end of the phone, and Li Bin, director of the Textbook Department of the Department of Textbooks of the Ministry of Education, excitedly said to me, "Secretary Chen, I tell you a good news, the successful application for the ruins of liangzhu ancient city marks the international recognition of the value of empirical Chinese civilization history of more than 5,000 years, so the words 'some scholars think' have been deleted." I seized the opportunity to tell Director Li that the successful application for the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City marks that the history of Chinese civilization for more than 5,000 years has been widely recognized by the world, which is a landmark historical event in Chinese history, and it is suggested that the historical events of the successful application for heritage be recorded in textbooks." The Ministry of Education did adopt it, adding to the textbook that "on July 6, 2019, the 43rd session of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee inscribed the ruins of Liangzhu Ancient City on the World Heritage List".

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