Yinqueshan Bamboo Slips

Yinqueshan gave its name to a Han tomb on the edge of Linyi. When the tomb was opened in 1972 it yielded bamboo slips carrying the Sun Tzu's Art of War, together with other classics written by hand on the same material. The find is counted among the ten greatest archaeological discoveries in China since the founding of the republic. The slips are now displayed in the Shandong Provincial Museum, and a museum near the centre of the city keeps original bamboo strips of the Warring States period. Text cut on bamboo is heavy and brittle, and it survives only where the ground stays dry, which is why a hillside at the edge of a city can hold what the libraries of the world never printed.