Chapter 22 Li Ji: The Discoverer of Oracle Bone Inscriptions

Li Ji (1896.6.2-1979.8.1), an anthropologist, modern Chinese archaeologist, and the father of Chinese archaeology.The word accepts it, and then changes it to help it.A native of Zhongxiangying, Hubei. In 1911, he was admitted to the Tsinghua Academy, a preparatory school for studying in the United States. In 1918, he stayed in the United States at an official expense, and entered Clark University in Massachusetts to study psychology, and changed his major to demography the following year. After obtaining a master's degree in sociology in 1920, he transferred to Harvard University in the United States. He majored in anthropology and received a Ph.D. In 1922, Li Ji graduated from Harvard University, returned to his motherland, and was employed by Nankai University as a professor of anthropology and sociology.

Li Ji owes his early education to his father Li Quan.Li Quan is a well-educated teacher who has the largest school in the county.My father believes that when a child first starts school, let him learn the most difficult ones first, and then learn the easy ones, so that the progress will be greater.Therefore, Li Ji did not start from "the beginning of human beings, nature is good" like other children, but from "Pangu first came out, heaven and earth first divided".But because Li Quan is a well-known scholar in the county, no one dared to accuse him of violating the traditional education habits.

In 1907, the Qing Dynasty held the last imperial examination. Li Quan, who was called "Li Yougong" by the locals, was also sent to Beijing to take the examination, and was awarded the title of a seventh-rank Beijing official, assigned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.Li Quan took his family to Beijing, and Li Ji came to Beijing with his family when he was 11 years old. In 1911, Tsinghua Academy, a preparatory school for studying in the United States, opened with Boxer indemnity, began to enroll students, and there were more than 1,000 applicants.Li Ji, who was still called "Li Shunjing" at the time, took the exam in a daze, and was admitted into the "preparation list", ranking third from the bottom.If candidates do not get enough candidates, they will continue to choose from the "reserve list", so Li Ji is lucky to be one of the 120 freshmen admitted in Beijing.After seven and a half years of study, the same batch of students they entered were eliminated after successive examinations, and finally only 57 people remained.

In August 1918, 22-year-old Li Ji went to study in the United States on the ocean liner "Nanjing" from Shanghai.When Li Ji was studying in Tsinghua University, a Dr. Walcott from the United States taught them psychology and ethics, and for the first time made an IQ test among Chinese students (Li Ji was determined to be 128).Influenced by him, Li Ji became very interested in psychology, so he initially studied psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts. Professor Hall, the former president of Clark University, advocated that students go to the library to read freely. He believed that only in this way can students discover their true interests. The school's library and stacks are all open to students for reading.At that time, anthropology was just emerging in the United States. There were some works of famous anthropologists in the library of Clark University. Li Ji was fascinated at once, and then changed to anthropology with the encouragement of the old president, Professor Hall.

After hearing that Li Ji transferred to study anthropology, his good friend Xu Zhimo agreed very much. He thought Li Ji was suitable for learning.Xu Zhimo and Li Ji went to the United States on the same boat. He is a student studying abroad at his own expense.During my first year at Clark University, I lived in the same apartment and had a good relationship.Xu Zhimo studied in the Department of History, and transferred from Clark University to Columbia University in New York to study banking in his second year. After the summer vacation of 1920, Xu Zhimo went to London across the Atlantic Ocean, while Li Ji entered the graduate school of Harvard University for further studies, and began their respective lives from then on.When later generations sorted out Li Ji's documents, they found 9 letters that Xu Zhimo wrote to him after he went to New York, which Li Ji had preserved. The letters talked extensively about life and study.Xu Zhimo also commented on Li Ji in the past: "Fortitude and dullness, hard work, all the virtues required by scholars, brothers have them."

In June 1923, Li Ji received a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University. Li Ji's thesis was rated as "excellent" and was later officially published at Harvard University. A historian said, "Since then, Chinese and foreign scholars have discussed Most of his books are quoted on issues related to ethnicity and race in China." In 1922, Russell, a famous philosopher, published his famous book "The Chinese Question", in which he mentioned that Li Ji's thesis gave him "some enlightening insights", and quoted Li Ji's thesis in large sections.It is rare for a celebrity like Russell to quote and appreciate the works of an unknown young man so much in his book, which also made Li Ji famous all at once.

Interestingly, after Li Ji obtained his Ph.D. in the United States, Li Quan didn't know how to measure this unfamiliar title, but he was unwilling to do so, and soon came up with a way to call himself "Bofu".Li Ji's friends, like Zhao Yuanren, also jokingly called him "Mr. Li Bofu". When Li Ji was studying at Harvard, there was a lecturer on Physical Anthropology, Horton. Li Ji translated his name into the Japanese name "Tiger Teng". In the summer vacation of 1921, Hu Teng gave Li Ji a batch of unopened He spent half a day unpacking, washing, and arranging the skulls for 500 Egyptian skulls, and paid by the hour.Li Ji spent more than half of the summer vacation doing this work. He later recalled this experience and said: The experience of arranging skulls this time gave him a personal experience of handling human bones, especially human skulls, which was beneficial to his later practice of biometric measurements. As well as processing human skulls unearthed from the Yin Ruins in Anyang is very beneficial.Later, at the excavation site of the Yin Ruins in Anyang, many young archaeologists were trained to sort out human bones under the guidance of Li Ji. Later, famous archaeologists Gao Quxun, Yin Da, Xia Nai, etc. all talked about this matter.

After obtaining his doctorate, Li Ji returned to China as scheduled.At first, he was hired by Zhang Boling, the president of Nankai University, as a professor of sociology and anthropology. In 1924, Li Ji, already the director of liberal arts at Nankai University, went to Northwest University to give lectures together with Lu Xun, Wang Tongling, Jiang Tingfu and others, and thus met Mr. Lu Xun. In April 1925, Tsinghua Academy of Chinese Studies was established, and Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao, Chen Yinke, and Zhao Yuanren were hired as professors. Li Ji, 29, was employed as the only lecturer. This year, archaeological teams from the United States, France, Sweden and other countries came to China for "treasure hunting".Among them, Bi Shibo, a member of the Freer Museum of Art at the Smithsonian Institution, heard that Li Ji was the first Chinese doctor of philosophy from Harvard University, so he wrote to invite Li Ji to join their archaeological team.Li Ji's reply put forward two conditions: first, to do field archeology in China, he must cooperate with Chinese academic groups; second, the cultural relics excavated in China must stay in China.Bi Shibo replied: "We can promise you one thing, that is, we will never let a patriotic person do what he does not want to do."

In May 1926, Bi Shibo and Cao Yunxiang, President of Tsinghua University, agreed on cooperation matters, that is, the Freer Museum of Art will cooperate with Tsinghua National Academy, hosted by Mr. Li Ji, mainly funded by Freer, excavation reports in Chinese and English, and cultural relics obtained It is temporarily kept by Tsinghua University and will be handed over to the National Museum of China in the future. In October 1926, Li Ji led a team to Xiyin Village, Xia County, Shanxi Province.In the early spring of this year, Li Jizeng and geologist Yuan Fuli conducted a travel survey along the Fen River Basin.In Xiyin Village, they found a place full of pottery fragments.The area is huge, with several acres of land.They leaned over to pick up a few fragments exposed on the ground, and took a closer look: they were all prehistoric pottery fragments.After returning, Li Ji decided to use Xiyin Village as the site of the first archaeological excavation.From October 15 to early December, the archaeological team not only discovered more than 100,000 pieces of prehistoric pottery in Xiyin Village, but also unearthed a large number of stone tools, human bones, animal bones, and shell pieces.The most interesting thing is that half a silkworm cocoon shell that had been cut by a sharp weapon was found.This discovery shows that the Chinese nation domesticated silkworm cocoons in prehistoric times. In September 1995, to commemorate the centenary of Mr. Li Ji's birth, Taiwan's "National Palace Museum" held an 8-day "special exhibition". The "weight" of the shell.

This excavation picked up an important part of the history of Chinese civilization - the Yangshao Cultural Site in Xiyin Village, and it also marked the entry of modern scientific archaeology into China.They formulated the "Management Measures for the Excavation of Historical Relics in Shanxi Province", which clearly stated that "the excavation proceeds belong to the state"; in Xiyin Village, they did not excavate the entire site, but only selected a small area.During the excavation, the field scientific archaeological work methods created by Li Ji, such as "three-point records", "stacking", and "exploring trenches and pits", laid the cornerstone of modern scientific archaeology and are still used by the archaeological community today.

Mr. Li Xueqin, a well-known Chinese scholar and the chief scientist of the "Xia, Shang and Zhou Dating Project", once said: "Modern archeology has truly and systematically developed in China since 1928 when Li Ji took up the post of Archaeologist at the Institute of History and Linguistics (Institute of History and Philology) of the Academia Sinica. After being the director of the group, he presided over the excavation of the Yin Ruins." Yin Ruins cultural site, the first major archaeological discovery in China in the 20th century.It is Mr. Li Ji who made the Yin Ruins, today's Anyang, Henan, to the world. From the 1920s to the 1930s, 14 of the 15 excavations of the Yin Ruins were completed under the auspices of Mr. Li Ji. In October 1928, Li Ji, who was in the United States, received a letter from Fu Sinian, hoping that he would come back as soon as possible to serve as the director of the archaeological group of the Institute of History and Language, Academia Sinica.At this time, the first excavation of the Yin Ruins organized by the Academia Sinica was underway.At the end of the year, Li Ji returned home.In March of the following year, the Academia Sinica conducted a second excavation on the Yin Ruins.From then on, almost every spring and autumn, the Institute would excavate the Yin Ruins under the auspices of Li Ji until the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War in 1937. The original purpose of archeology at the Yin Ruins in Anyang was to find ancient Chinese history with writing, which is commonly called "Oracle Bone Inscriptions". In 1929, the third excavation of Yin Ruins presided over by Li Ji unearthed the famous "Fourth Edition of Big Turtle".This is the first large oracle bone found in the Yin Ruins, and the tortoise tablet is engraved with divination words from the Yin and Shang Dynasties. In June 1936, the last excavation of the Yin Ruins yielded the most important results: the 12th was the last day of this "battle". At 4:00 p.m., a tortoise plate was found in an underground storage pit in Xiaotun Village. .The staff carefully took out piece by piece.Unexpectedly, when the 3760 yuan was taken out, it was only a surface part.So, I decided to continue for another day.The next day, when the sun went down, their work wasn't over.Later, it took another 4 days and nights to lift out the clods of buried treasures as a whole.After months of sorting out, a total of 17,096 oracle bones with characters were found this time. In the Yin Ruins, bronze wares, jade wares, daily utensils, human and animal bones, architectural relics and so on appeared at the same time as oracle bone inscriptions. In the 11th excavation in 1935, 10 large tombs and more than 1,200 small tombs were cleared.There are a large number of engraved stone tools, jade ornaments, bronze wares, etc. in the large tomb, and the buried bodies in the small tomb are in different postures such as bending over, facing up, and bending down, and there is also a kneeling human body remnant.Obviously, the small tomb is a burial tomb, which is a royal tomb of the Yin and Shang Dynasties. In the 14th excavation in April 1936, a chariot and horse burial pit with a complete carriage and four horses was discovered.This is the first time that the means of transportation in the Shang Dynasty have been discovered, and it has once again caused a sensation in Chinese and foreign academic circles.A Shang dynasty that had been lost for 3,000 years appeared in front of the world as if from heaven. In the article "The Reconstruction of Ancient Chinese History and Its Problems", he said: "Chinese historians regard ancient Chinese history as something south of the Great Wall. The Great Wall is not only a boundary of territory but also a boundary of spirit; The origin of the human nation and culture was blocked by the Great Wall on the northern side." "In short, if we regard Chinese history as a part of all human history, it is much farther than traditional history." "We discuss China's The most important point of history, which is different from the past, is that we feel and have proved that the historical materials of ancient history have other sources besides written records; new materials obtained from these sources have led to many This is a new problem, and it has been accepted by general historians. They must incorporate archaeological and ethnological materials, and these new materials will not only help them solve old problems, but also inspire new problems.” In the article "Re-discussion on the Reconstruction of Ancient Chinese History", he said: "Chinese history is the most glorious aspect of all human history, and its brilliance will be more vivid only when it is viewed against the background of all human history. Shut it up in an old house, and its days of narcissism are over." He also expounded four realms that new historians should reach: the first realm is what the geologist Mr. Ding Wenjiang told his friend, he said: "There is gold everywhere in China for modern academic work, as long as someone chooses it." This is about respecting the academic resources of the country.The second realm can be said to be "seeing is better than hearing a hundred times, and relying on others is worse than relying on oneself", which means that as a new historian, we should pay attention to acquiring knowledge from practice.The third state should be "it is better to commit the great misfortune of the world than to be disturbed by my heart". When meeting such a courageous person, the original material can almost complement each other.The fourth realm, I can call it "the useless use is for great use".This last seems to imply a defense of the academic situation of history and so on.He finally concluded: "Doing the work of historical linguistics in this realm can be said to be the same as the work of biologists and geologists." After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Li Ji, as a consultant of the Chinese delegation to Japan, went to Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and other places in Japan to investigate the Chinese cultural relics looted by Japan during the war.After returning to China, Li Ji wrote the "Report on Chinese Antiquities Seen in Japan after the Anti-Japanese War" and reported it to the relevant departments.In this investigation, important cultural relics such as Zhoukoudian relics and classic books collected in the Central Library were recovered.However, Li Ji has always regretted that he did not find the "Peking Skull". In 1937, only 18 days after the 15th excavation of Yin Ruins ended, the "Marco Polo Bridge Incident" broke out.Because Li Ji succeeded Fu Sinian as the director of the Preparatory Office of the Central Museum (Zhongbo) since 1934, Fu Sinian and Li Ji were responsible for the relocation of the "Institute of History and Philology" and "Zhongbo" to the southwest. The first stop of the relocation of the "Institute of History and Philosophy" was to Changsha via Wuhan, where it only stayed for 3 months. Because of the continuous bombing by Japanese planes, it decided to move westward to Kunming. Before moving to the southwest, an unprecedented thing happened in the archaeological team: several young people joined the army and left the "Institute of History and Philology".Li Ji felt conflicted because of this: On the one hand, the achievements of the Anyang excavation are too important, but the research work has not yet officially started, and the personnel have dispersed. What should we do in the future?On the other hand, with the enemy in front of us, even I have the idea of ​​killing the enemy on the front line, let alone these passionate young people? One day in the early winter of 1937, in a small restaurant by the Changsha Highway, Li Ji, Dong Zuobin, Liang Siyong and all other staff drank farewell wine and saw off Yin Da, Qi Yanpei, Wang Xiang and others.Most of them went to Yan'an later, so they never saw each other after breaking up this time. After moving from Guilin to Kunming via Vietnam, the "Institute of History and Language" settled here for two years.One of the most gratifying things for Li Ji here is that Wu Jinding, Zeng Zhao (Note: Zeng Guofan's great-granddaughter, committed suicide in the 1960s), Xia Nai and others returned to Kunming from England and became new forces in the Chinese archaeological field. In the winter of 1940, due to the tense war on the Yunnan-Vietnam line, the "Institute of History and Language" and "Zhongbo" moved out of Kunming and arrived at Lizhuang Town in Yibin, Sichuan. The six years of Lizhuang was a relatively stable period for the "Institute of History and Philology" and "Zhongbo" during the Anti-Japanese War.There is also a small episode in Lizhuang.During a transport, a wooden box was accidentally damaged, and the human skull and body bone specimens inside were all exposed.At that time, the farmers were in an uproar, and a colleague from Guangdong ate a snake to satisfy his hunger. The local people said that this institution not only eats snakes, but also eats people.Later, Li Ji, the director of the institute, Fu Sinian, and others had to come forward, invite local officials and local gentry to have a discussion, explain to them the significance of studying human bones, and ask them to give some necessary explanations to the people. Only then did the crisis be resolved. In December 1941, the Japanese army invaded Hong Kong, and all the cultural relics stored in Hong Kong by the "Institute of History and Language" were lost; in March of the following year, the Japanese army invaded and occupied Changsha, and the cultural relics stored there were also lost. It's a pity.Not only that, but because of poor medical conditions, his two daughters, Hezheng and Fengzheng, died of illness in Kunming and Lizhuang in 1939 and 1942 respectively. Fengzheng was only 17 years old when he died.For Li Ji, it was a time of internal and external troubles.Li Ji and his wife gave birth to four children, and the eldest daughter died when she was young, leaving only one boy.They later adopted the child from their uncle's family and named them "Guangzhou". Li Guangzhou later became an archaeologist. In August 1945, after Japan surrendered, Li Ji was sent as an expert to join the Chinese delegation to Japan, and went to various parts of Japan to investigate the Chinese cultural relics looted by Japan during the war. "Human Skull" failed, and he regretted it all his life. In December 1948, the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica moved directly from Nanjing to Taiwan. Thousands of boxes of books, instruments, and specimens were packed in the institute, and they were shipped together with important cultural relics from the Forbidden City and "Zhongbo".At that time, many cultural relics had just been transported back to Nanjing from the rear, and it was too late to unpack and move to Taiwan. The cultural relics from the Yin Ruins in Anyang were also included in the transfer, and Li Ji was the escort this time.Many people oppose the relocation of cultural relics, and Li Ji is also very conflicted, but his first consideration is to protect cultural relics. He said: if cultural relics are safe, it doesn't matter where they go.Someone advised him not to follow the boat for fear of danger, but he refused to listen.At that time, many intellectuals were still hopeful about the KMT-CPC peace talks, thinking of avoiding a period of war and continuing their own research after they settled down.