Chi Li - The Beginnings of Chinese Civilization

This book series collects, organizes and presents the master pieces in contemporary China studies. Titles in this series include those by Chinese authors who studied and worked abroad during early times whose works were originally in English and had already made great impacts in the Western world, such as Hu Shi, Fei Xiaotong and others; as well as works by more recent authors, Chinese and non-Chinese, that are of critical intellectual importance in introducing and understanding the transformation of the modern Chinese society. A wide variety of topics are covered by the series, from philosophy, economics, and history to law, cultural geography and regional politics. This series is a key English language resource for researchers and students in China studies and related subjects, as well as for general interest readers. The book series is a cooperation project between Springer and Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd.

Academic Advisory Board:

Researcher Geng, Yunzhi, Institute of Modern History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China

Professor Han, Zhen, Beijing Normal University, China

Researcher Hao, Shiyuan, Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China

Professor Li, Xueqin, Department of History, Tsinghua University, China

Professor Li, Yining, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, China

Researcher Lu, Xueyi, Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, China

Professor Tang, Yijie, Department of Philosophy, Peking University, China

Professor Wong, Young-tsu, Department of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, USA

Professor Yu, Keping, School of Government, Peking University, China

Professor Yue, Daiyun, Department of Chinese Language and Literature, Peking University, China

Zhu, Yinghuang, China Daily Press, China

Series Coordinators:

Zitong Wu, Editorial Board of Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press

Leana Li, Springer

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11562

Jointly published with Foreign Language Teaching and Research Publishing Co., Ltd

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After almost 60 years, first as the father and later as the dean of Chinese archaeology, Li Chi has left indelible contributions to the science of humankind and of history, and his thinking still dominates his discipline in China.

Born in Hupei, Li Chi grew up at home and in Peking at a time when the old country, forced by encounters with the West, was taking its initial steps on the long road to modernization. Then, as now, bright young students were sent to Western countries to learn their scientific secrets. After his graduation from the elite Tsinghua Academy, Li Chi was sent to the United States, where he studied psychology and sociology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and then anthropology at Harvard. According to an interview with Wilma Fairbank in 1977, Li Chi said that he went to Clark because a psychology teacher at Tsinghua, a Dr. Wolcott, had told him that Clark was the place to be for psychology. While at Clark, Li Chi developed the habit of spending every Saturday morning browsing in the open shelves of the library. There he happened upon anthropology books and was fascinated by this subject, of which he had had no previous knowledge. At Harvard, where he earned a doctorate in 1923, Li Chi studied with Hooton, Tozzer, and Dixon, and from these three mentors, he learned, respectively, physical anthropology, archaeology, and ethnology, all of which he made use of, both in his doctoral dissertation (1928) and in his subsequent 60-year career in China.

From 1923, when he returned to China, to 1928, Li Chi was the typical university professor-cum-research scholar in the American mold. He taught at Nan-kai University in Tientsin (19231925) and then at his alma mater Tsinghua Academys new Graduate Research Institute (19251928). From 1925 to 1926 he undertook the excavation of a Neolithic Yang-shao culture site at Hsi-yin-tsun in Hsia Hsien, southern Shansi, under the joint auspices of the Tsinghua Institute and the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., becoming the first Chinese scholar to dig an archaeological site.

The year 1928 was a turning point in Li Chis life, and it was a turning point in Chinese archaeology and historiography as well. To appreciate fully the significance of events surrounding Li Chi beginning in 1928 we must go back some 30 years, to 1899, 1 year before the Boxers and the Allied Invasion which wrought Imperial Chinas ultimate humiliation in the face of the industrial and military might of the West. In that year oracle bone inscriptions of the Shang (or Yin) Dynasty (17661122 B.C.) came to the attention of ancient historians for the first time since the dynastys fall 3,000 years previously, and during the next 30 years, Shang scholars within and outside of China became fascinated by this new historiographic source material and launched extensive efforts to track down the bones floating on the antiquities market. Before long, the scholars became aware that these inscribed bones had come from Yin Hs, the ruins of the Yin Dynasty, long known to be on the banks of the river Huan, near the modern city of An-yang, in northern Honan.