We are here at Anyang, a place called Yinshui, which was the last capital of the Shang dynasty,

a place very, very important for Chinese archaeology.

And we are here with a leading specialist in Chinese archaeology, Professor Su Rongyu,

whom we know since quite a while, in fact.

And we'd just like to ask him some questions about the place and perhaps even about his early career, so to speak.

I studied engineering and mechanical manufacturing in college.

But my college was at Xi'an Jiafeng University,

which is a city that has a long history of Chinese culture.

There are many cultural heritage sites there.

They attracted me.

I was very curious about how ancient people made such a beautiful bronze instrument.

And that's how I got interested in this field, and I came to this path,

to study ancient Chinese archaeology and ancient engineering.

Anyang is the cradle of Chinese archaeology, right?

Yes.

Chinese archaeology is the same as other Chinese sciences.

It all started very late, and it all started with the influence of the West.

When they discovered J�gægū in 1895,

bike visitors had not yet returned to China.

A very important scholar in 1928 once studied in Germany,

and after graduating fromąć- Hmm, Berlin University in Germany,

he came back again to build the colonial RNA study.

He thought that historical research was something that needed multiple materials.

And so he thought that layman's tools were extremely limited and

this was a sort of scale in terms of harboring all the materials in Chinese ceramics.

Everyone had had their day's work

so that's why he chose ancient Chinese archaeology.

So he chose Anyang, which is the capital of Jia Gu, to do archaeological research.

From there, Chinese archaeological scholars were established in China and developed.

I want to ask, what is the relationship between Anyang and Gu Jiegang?

Gu Jiegang's influence on Chinese history was very big.

Our traditional history is based on literature and various documents.

Now, Gu Jiegang's research shows that many documents are unreliable.

How can we establish a reliable history in China?

Archaeology will provide important materials and means.

In the Ming Dynasty, they spent a lot of effort and human resources to do archaeological research.

This is closely related to the pursuit of the Fu Si Nian and the academic world.

On the one hand, this is to emphasize the scientific nature of Chinese historical studies.

On the other hand, it is also related to the issue of Chinese identity.

That's right.

China has been living in a so-called semi-native society since the late Qing Dynasty.

It is also predicted that there will be a great threat from Japan.

In the 20s and 30s, China had a good development in the so-called golden age.

In this way, China must find its own identity problem.

What do you think about Chinese history? What is our ancestor?

So China has to use scientific methods.

Why do we use archaeological science and historical research?

This method and material can be recognized by international scholars.

So scientific archaeology was established in China.

This place is closely related to the Zhanpu, right?