bamboo and wooden slips

{{Short description|Classical Chinese writing medium}}

{{more citations needed|date=March 2013}}

{{Infobox Chinese

|t=簡牘

|s=简牍

|l=bamboo slips [and] wooden tablets

|p=jiǎndú

|w=chien³-tu²

|mi={{IPAc-cmn|j|ian|3|d|u|2}}

|j=gaan²-duk⁶

|y=gáan-duhk

|tl=kán-to̍k

|mc= /kˠɛn^Xduk̚/

|image=File:Warring States Bamboo Slips, Copy (10185830983).jpg

|caption=Replica of bamboo slips from the Warring States period

}}

File:Kǒngzǐ Shīlùn Manuscript from Shanghai Museum 1.jpg (c. 300 BC), recording part of a commentary on the Classic of Poetry]]

File:Bamboo book - binding - UCR.jpg made with bamboo strips]]

Bamboo and wooden strips ({{lang-zh|s=简牍|t=簡牘|p=jiǎndú}}) are long, narrow strips of wood or bamboo, each typically holding a single column of several dozen brush-written characters. They were the main media for writing documents in China before the widespread introduction of paper during the first two centuries AD. (Silk was occasionally used, for example in the Chu Silk Manuscript, but was prohibitively expensive for most documents.){{Cite web|url=https://cn.nytimes.com/culture/20180621/ancient-chinese-manuscript-sackler/zh-hant/|title=寫於2300年前的《楚帛書》如何流落到了美國？|last=張彥|date=2018-06-21|website=The New York Times|language=zh-cmn-hant|trans-title=How did the Chu Silk Manuscript, written 2,300 years ago, get to the United States?|access-date=2019-09-16}}

Strips of wood or bamboo vary primarily in length. For bamboo manuscripts, the strips can go from as short as 9 cm to as long as 45 cm. The width is more consistently around 0.6 cm. The writing proceeds vertically, from right to left. Strips were bound together with hemp, silk, or leather and used to make a kind of folding book, called jiǎncè or jiǎndú.{{Cite book |title=Encyclopedia of China: History and Culture |last=Perkins |first=Dorothy |publisher=Routledge |year=1998 |isbn=978-157958110-7 |pages=24}}{{cite book |last1=Lyons |first1=Martyn |title=Books: A Living History |date=2011 |publisher=Getty Publications |location=Los Angeles, CA |isbn=9781606060834 |page=18}} The binding process usually takes place after the writing, with a few exceptions.

The earliest surviving examples of wood and bamboo slips date from the 5th century BC during the Warring States period. However, references in earlier texts surviving on other media make it clear that some precursor of these Warring States period bamboo slips was in use as early as the late Shang period (from about 1250 BC). Bamboo and wooden strips were the standard writing material during the Han dynasty and excavated examples have been found in abundance.{{cite book|last=Loewe|first=Michael|chapter=Wood and bamboo administrative documents of the Han period|editor=Edward L. Shaughnessy| title=New Sources of Early Chinese History|publisher=Society for the Study of Early China|year=1997|pages=161–192|isbn=1-55729-058-X}} Subsequently, the improvements made to paper by Cai Lun during the Han dynasty began to displace bamboo and wooden strips from mainstream uses, and by the 4th century AD bamboo had been largely abandoned as a medium for writing in China.

The custom of interring books made of the durable bamboo strips in royal tombs has preserved many works in their original form through the centuries. An important early find was the Jizhong discovery in 279 AD in a tomb of a king of Wei, though the original recovered strips have since disappeared. Several caches of great importance have been found in recent years.