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Liyi is located in the heart of the Wuling Mountains in Hunan Province, at the junction of the four provinces and municipalities of Hunan, Hubei, Chongqing, and Guizhou. It is under the jurisdiction of Longshan County in the Xiangxi Tujia and Miao Autonomous Prefecture. In the Tujia language, 'Liyi' means 'to open up this land.' As early as 6,000 years ago, humans already lived here. Despite its magical natural scenery and unique ethnic customs, inconvenient transportation kept its economy and culture relatively backward for a long time, making it a remote small town.
Historical records show that Liyi began to build streets and docks during the Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty. During the Yongzheng reign, Liyi Tang was established, and it gradually became a market town. Thanks to its superior transportation location, profound cultural heritage, and once-thriving trade, it was known along with Wangcun, Pushi, and Chadong as one of the Four Great Ancient Towns of Xiangxi.
In June 1985, a group of bricklayers in Liyi Town who were making bricks and tiles dug up some pottery and weapons while digging clay for adobe, thus opening the way for intermittent archaeological excavations at Liyi by the archaeological community.
In 2002, it became world-famous for the unearthed 37,400 Qin bamboo slips. The excavation of the Liyi Ancient City site and the Qin bamboo slips is one of the most important archaeological discoveries of the 21st century.
To coordinate with the construction of the Wanmipo Hydropower Station, the Hunan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, together with the cultural relics departments of Xiangxi Autonomous Prefecture and Longshan County, began in April 2002 a rescue excavation of the Warring States to Qin-Han ancient city at Liyi Town. The city site faces the You River to the east, is rectangular in shape, and covers an area of nearly 20,000 square meters. Remains of a city moat still survive in the northwest. More than 30 excavation squares were opened, with an excavated area of nearly 1,000 square meters. Rich remains and relics from different periods have been found in various parts of the city, outside the city, on the city walls, and in the moat. Among the unearthed objects are wooden shovels, stakes, mallets, wedges, hammers, and bamboo woven items, as well as palm and hemp woven shoes and ropes; pottery includes cylindrical tiles, flat tiles, jars, and stemmed bowls. There are also metal tools such as knives, axes, scrapers, hammers, arrowheads, awls, and swords.
The excavated Well No. 1 was first built during the Warring States period and abandoned at the end of the Qin Dynasty. The well is 14.27 meters deep, circular, and 4 meters in diameter. The most important discovery here is the bamboo and wooden slips, which are present from a depth of 3.8 meters all the way to the bottom of the well. Preliminary estimates put the number at more than 36,000 slips, with tens of thousands of characters. Most are wooden, with a small number made of bamboo, and the wooden tablets come in diverse forms.
According to the dozens of slip texts that have already been cleaned, most are official archives of the time, covering a wide range of content and involving all aspects of society at that time, such as postal communications, military preparedness, arithmetic, and records of events. The content is extremely substantial. Place names mentioned include Qianling, Dongting (Commandery), Linyuan, Geyang, Youyang, Yuanling, Yangling, and dozens of others. Official titles include Sikong, Sima Cheng, Shou Cheng, Ling Shou, and others, often accompanied by personal names, such as 'Qianling Shou Cheng Teng.' In arithmetic, a multiplication table was unearthed, such as 'four eights make thirty-two, five eights make forty.' Records concerning ethnic groups include 'the Yue people rebelled against the Man with city walls.' Several slips also involve discussion of a certain administrative establishment of Dongting Commandery. Some slip texts also record the grain consumption of local garrison troops during a certain period. Most of the bamboo and wooden slips date to the Qin Dynasty after King Zheng of Qin unified China and proclaimed himself First Emperor. Their reign years run from the twenty-sixth year (221 BCE) to the thirty-seventh year (210 BCE), with not a single year missing, and the records are detailed down to the month and day. There are also many characters on the sealing clay boxes. Bamboo and wooden slips of such early date, such large quantity, and such important content are the first of their kind in China. This is another major discovery in Qin Dynasty archaeology after the Terracotta Army.
