Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts

The Tsinghua University bamboo-strip manuscripts are among the most extraordinary collections of ancient texts discovered in China to date. In Introduction to the Tsinghua Bamboo-Strip Manuscripts, Liu Guozhong, one of the scholars intimately involved in editing the Tsinghua strips, offers a straightforward overview to the complexities inherent in researching this collection. Liu provides an invaluable glimpse into how these artifacts were cleaned, preserved, and prepared for publication, while also situating them within a history of similar finds. He moreover explores in detail a number of crucial questions raised by the Tsinghua strips, from the transmission of the Shangshu and the nature of the oft-neglected Yi Zhoushu, to the implications these texts have for our understanding of early Western Zhou history.

Liu Guozhong, Ph.D. (1997), Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, is Professor at Tsinghua University. His research focuses on bamboo-strip manuscripts and ancient Chinese culture. His principle publications include (in Chinese) Research on the Wuxing dayi, Ancient Silk Manuscripts, and Numerological Texts from the Sui and TangChristopher J. Foster and William N. French are both Ph.D. candidates studying early Chinese history in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.