This book embraces most of the papers on archaeology, history and geograhpy by the late prof. Huang Wenbi.
Perhaps some words about the author's life will facilitate a fuller understanding of what are given in the author's book.
Huang was born in 1893 of a rural family in Hubei of central China. The years of his childhood and youth bore a witness to those most dramaticil scenes in the conflict of two civilizations in modern China. He first entered a new-styled middle school in his hometown, and having finished learning there came to Bejing and began to study at Peking University, the first modern top seat of learning in China. The famous liberalist thinker Cai Yuanpei's directorship during Huang's later terms turned the university into a forum of various thoughts. This lent a lot to Huang's identification with new values, as evinced in his affillation of the Morality Promoting Association or in his seeing learning, in harmony with its modern professionalization, as a lifelong and full-time pursuit, instead of straddle over a scholar and an official, a typical stance of the traditional intellectuals. His major at the university was ancient Chinese philosophy. After graduation he worked at the University Institute of Sinology. He devoted several years to research of the Neo-Confuciznism of the Song and Ming Dynasties and published the book On the Methodology of Two Chengs' Philosophy. Later, is interest once shifted to bibliography and brought out New Classification of Old Chinese Books.
The Sino Sweddish expedition to Northwest Chirta in 1927 marked the beginning of his archaeological career, although several yeers earlier he had joined the newly-established University Association of Archaeologists and had written an article on artistic archaeology. "Today I come out into the open field and bid farewell for the time being to the days of bending over the desk" he said excitedly in his dairy of the departure day.
Chinese scholars' interest in the history and geography of the Northwestern frontiers can be traced back to the middle and late Qing Dynasty. It had converged with an eager attention to the newly-discovered ancient documents into an academic trend, which, later with the introduction of the western science was invested with new life. Still virgin to Chinese archaeologists, that desolate land had become a haunt of foreign explorers, of whom Stein, Hedin and Pelliot are but several big names. They entered the region sheer unchecked and went home heavily loaden, provoking an ambivalence from among Chinese intellectuals of Huang's generation: scientific identification and nationalist alienation or repugnancy. In 1927 when Hedin came to Beijing for another expedition he found himself confronted with an unsupple intellegentsia. A compromise was reached after chaffer between the two sides that endorsed a joint expedition and maintained a Chinese ownership of the findings. Thus, Huang was enrolled in the joint team, both as an explorer and a defender of China's antiguities. This duality seems to have manifesteditself in Huang in a less cryptical way.
Huang's maiorjobin the expedition was archaeological recon naissanee and collection, which can be divided into two phases. In the first one he traveled with the whole team from Beijing traversing Inner Mongolia into Xinjiang. The Etsin-gol inscribed slips now familiar to every student of the field were first discovered by Huang at one spot, and a little later, in a great number, by Bergman at another spot nearby. Of this trip Hedin had vivid narration. The second phase of work was conducted in Xinjiang with the emphasis placed on the Turfan Basin and the sites skirting the Tarim Desert. Most of Huang's important discoveries were made during this period. His exploration lasted more than three years. When he reappeared in Beijing in 1930 with some eighty crates of finds, the Chinese archaeological circles still in their boyhood was given much stir. Not a man of literary talent, Huang's description of the trip was but "full of hardship".
The subsequent years he spent on sorting and studying his collections and teaching at some universities at the same time. He published, as the result of his exploration, Inscribed Bricks from Gaochang and Pottery from Gaochang along with some articles. With the financial aid from the Ministry of Education he had another archaeological tour to Xinjiang but was badly hedged about by the political disturbance there. He once went to Xi'an and took charge of the renovation and relayout of the Stele Forest.
The eight years of the Sino-Japanese war made his life quite a precarious one. He taught at the Northwestern University and Sichuan University. Most of his books were brought to naught by flames of war. He now wrung food out of his lean bookshelf, now managed to replenishit. This added to the difficulty of his writing the report on his exploration, which was often done deep into the night under a primitive oil-lamp.
Not long after the war he returned to Beijing at the invitation of the Institute of History, Beiping (Beijing) Academy, to complete his long report, which went into publication a year later under the title of Exploration around Lop-nor.
After Liberation in 1949 he served as a research fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Within a few years he got other four of his long reports published. In 1958 at the age of 65 years, he led a team for the last time to Xinjiang. His late years passed peacefully in his study until the advent of the Cultural Revolution. He collapsed both physically and mentally in the pandemonium of the August of 1966, and died at a snowy dawn of the December of the same year.
Considering the comprehensiveness that gives a special feature to Huang's research the papers included in this volume have been divided into four parts by the regions explored instead of the disciplines approached.
Part One consists of 16 papers, either on subjects of a relatively comprehensive sense such as "On the Origin of the Xiongnu People" and "Notes on the Kingdom of Western Goddess", or dealing with the problems that concern Xinjiang or more broadly Northwest China such as "Topography of Xinjiang Past and Now" and "Geographical Distribution of the Kingdoms and Races in the Western Regions during the Han Dynasty". All the papers in Part Two are in this or that way related to Turfan, especially to the ancient Gaochang Kingdom. Studies of the cultural traits of ancient Turfan, history and boundary of Gaochang all to gether with criticism of stele and brick inscriptions make up the bulk of this section. Part Three includes 11 pepers in connection with the Tarim Basin. Compared with other areas, field work was more exciting here with many important sites reporfed. For the sake of the abundance of discoveried, the papers pertaining to Lop-nor, a region falling geographically under Tarim, have been compiled into an independant unit, viz. Part Four, in which the function of the region in the intercourse of China with countries to her west, the introduction of Buddhism into the area, the ethnicity of some ancient native peoples and ancient inscribed wooden slips are discussed.
A preface with a short biography is given by Prof. Huang Lie, a historian and son of the author. (by Huang Jisu)
塔里木盆地考古記圖