Two days ago, the Liangzhu Archaeological Site was inscribed on the World Cultural Heritage List, and China's archaeological achievements in recent years are finally gaining public attention. Some may wonder: China has abundant cultural remains from five to seven thousand years ago—why was Liangzhu selected for the World Cultural Heritage? The most important reason is that Liangzhu is now widely recognized as having entered the stage of a state society (that is, civilization). This pushes the history of Chinese civilization from about 4,000 years at Erlitou (the exact figure is debated) back to 5,300 years ago. Chinese civilization is one of humanity's primary civilizations. To push a primary civilization's history back by more than a thousand years—this is the significance of Liangzhu.
So why is Liangzhu considered Chinese? There are at least several key points: jade, rice, silk, and mortise-and-tenon joinery—these core elements of Chinese civilization all appear at Liangzhu. The jade cong tubes of Liangzhu are particularly significant. We can see that similar forms have been found across various regions and dynasties, all the way through the Shang and Zhou, and all symbolized power. That Liangzhu is a major shareholder in Chinese civilization (contributing on the order of at least one-tenth) should not be in much doubt. The origins of Chinese civilization are now generally described with the phrase "pluralistic yet unified"—meaning multiple origins that ultimately merged into one. Within the dating range of the Liangzhu site (4,000 to 6,000 years ago), cultural remains have been excavated at sites scattered like stars across the geographical extent of modern China. Among the more recently discovered are Shimao in Shaanxi and Taosi in Shanxi; the earlier excavations are more familiar to most. Some of these cultures must also have reached a comparable level of state society—Taosi, for instance, has been suggested by some to be the Xia dynasty. So Liangzhu's status as a civilization did not single-handedly extend the length of Chinese civilizational history; it can be called a representative. In truth, whether Chinese civilization is 4,000 years old does not diminish its greatness, and pushing it to 5,300 years does not increase its greatness. Of course, how long the history actually is matters a great deal. But another important question is that for many years, certain people have insisted that China does not have five thousand years of history, that ancient Chinese history is a fabrication, and that the modern conception of China and its historical heritage are inventions of the state. This one-sided view turned the question of Chinese civilizational history into an issue of cultural politics, forcing new archaeological discoveries to prove these critics wrong. In reality, as I said, even 3,400 years of Chinese civilization would not diminish China's greatness. China's greatness lies in the Zhou, Qin, Han, and Tang dynasties. Even if the Shang people were of foreign origin, so what? Of course, I'm not implying that the Shang people actually were foreign—rather, some people insist they were, using this as evidence to belittle historical China, and accusing everyone from Sima Qian to modern China of wholesale fabrication. This is an irrational approach that should cease. Now we can say of Chinese civilization: "three thousand years of written history, five thousand years of archaeology." This is a remarkable achievement. And this achievement was not created solely by ancient Chinese people—it has also been forged by modern Chinese through archaeological excavation and historical research. Represented by the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips and Liangzhu, new discoveries are rewriting Chinese history. The Chinese history that our generation knows is more ancient and more extensive than what the ancient Chinese themselves knew. We are rediscovering China.