Leadership Insights | Illustrated Lectures: Carrying Truth with Writings and Promoting Sustained Development of Culture

In this new era, our nation is prosperous, our society is peaceful and stable, and our people have the willingness and ability to preserve our national culture. We need to push forward the great cause of cultural inheritance and development in this flourishing era. The construction of the China National Archives of Publications and Culture is a fundamental project to build China into a culturally advanced country, and a landmark cultural heritage project that will benefit generations to come. 

In July 2022, an elegant Chinese building complex was completed at the foot of Yanshan Mountains in Beijing. Among them, the three main buildings, Wenxing Building, Wenhua Hall and Wenhan Pavilion, appear full of literary appeal just from their names. This is the headquarters of the China National Archives of Publications and Culture.

The term “publications” here is a concept in the broad sense, which refers to all resources carrying the marks of Chinese civilization, regardless of historical period or location. In addition to books, the China National Archives of Publications and Culture also collects pottery, oracle bones, bronze wares, bamboo slips, silk, and paper. To date, it has kept more than 16 million precious copies and editions of various publications in its collection, preserving and carrying forward the genes of the profound Chinese civilization. 

The Tangut version of Samputa-santra dating back to the Western Xia Kingdom (1038-1227) is one of the most valuable treasures in the museum. Known as the earliest existing movable-type printed publication, it is an important cultural relic that changed the human history of printing. The discovery of this cultural relic provided physical evidence that the movable-type printing invested by Bi Sheng wasn’t left unused like some Western historical records declare, but was used in printing practice. 

In addition to the Tangut version of Samputa-santra, the museum also houses wooden movable types in Uigur script from Dunhuang, the earliest existing letter-based movable-type artifacts in the world; He Zun (drinking vessel), a bronze ware dating back to the early Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BC) that carries the earliest inscriptions of “Zhong Guo” (meaning “Central Kingdom”, which is used to refer to China); and the Great Universal Geographic Map co-created by Italian missionary Matteo Ricci and Li Zhizao, an official at the Ministry of Construction in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the first world map putting East Asia in the center, marking the origin of map drawing by Chinese people. 

China has a long history and a profound civilization. The cultural relics in the China National Archives of Publications and Culture contain not only the wisdom, spirit and culture of the Chinese nation, but also endless power, all of which show the brilliance of Chinese civilization and the breadth and depth of traditional Chinese culture.