Recently, the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences officially announced the list of approved special research projects for 2023 National Social Sciences Fund for Rare Fields of Knowledge. A total of twenty-seven academic team projects and sixty-six individual scholar projects were approved nationwide. Nankai University has a total of three approved projects,  including one academic team project and two individual scholar projects. The number of projects of the university has tied for the first place in the total number of approved projects nationwide.

The approved academic team project,the “Geographical Research on Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Reconstruction of the Shang History,” is conducted by the research team of the Shang and Zhou  history and geography led by Professor Chen Jie of the Faculty of History. The individual scholar projects are “Comprehensive Archaeological Research on Xianbei’s Integration into Chinese Civilization in the Han and Tang Dynasties” by Professor Zhang Guowen of the Faculty of History and “Research on Mutual Verification of Ancient Annotations, Cited Books, and Unearthed Documents Dating to the Period from Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty and Overseas Chinese Books” by Professor Zhao Jiancheng of the School of Literature.

The “Geographical Research on Oracle Bone Inscriptions and Reconstruction of the Shang History” by the research team of the Shang and Zhou history and geography is based on the all-round collation and studies on toponymic data from oracle bone inscriptions in Yinxu. It aims firstly to restore the geographical framework system for politics, economy, culture, and ethnic distribution in the late Shang Dynasty. Secondly, it makes a point of improving the overall precision of ancient history studies especially of the Shang history studies based on a new system of inscriptions geography, in the hope of providing credible fundamental materials for the construction of the discipline system, academic system, and discourse system of philosophy and social sciences with Chinese characteristics.

The core basis of the research on the geography of the late Shang Dynasty is to restore the route of the conquest of Renfang during the tenth year of the Dixin reign. The restoration work must be based on comparisons of the toponymic geographical system among documents such as bronze ware inscriptions in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the classical text of the Spring and Autumn Annals and its commentaries and the Book of Songs. The sub-projects mainly focus on the geographical system of place names on oracle bone inscriptions , the geographical system of place names on bronze ware inscriptions in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the geographical system of place names on ancient documents, and the reconstruction of the Shang history from the perspective of the new geographical system.

Leading expert: Professor Chen Jie, Faculty of History

Collection of Inscriptions on Oracle Bones, 6057

Collection of Inscriptions on Oracle Bones, 36553

The core members of the team (from left to right): Wang Xudong, Zhao Qingmiao, Li Jing, and Chen Jie

Representative achievements of the team related to the project

The “Comprehensive Archaeological Research on Xianbei’s Integration into Chinese Civilization during the Han and Tang Dynasties” project by Zhang Guowen adopts the theme of in-depth exploration of how the Xianbei people and their culture were integrated into Chinese civilization during the Han and Tang dynasties. This project employs historical, archaeological and natural science analysis methods to conduct a comprehensive archaeological study on the integration of Xianbei people into Chinese civilization during the Han and Tang dynasties from the perspectives of funeral customs, subsistence economy, physical characteristics.

Professor Zhang Guowen 

Dialogue spanning thousands of year 

Representative achievements in the early stage

Sketch map on the migration route of the Xianbei people /source of materials for multidisciplinary research

The “Research on Mutual Verification of Ancient Annotations, Cited Books, and Unearthed Documents Dating to the Period from Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty and Overseas Chinese Books” by Zhao Jiancheng uses the ancient annotations of classics dating to the period from the Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty as the research materials. On the basis of capitalizing on existing achievements of the academic community, this project comprehensively examines the ancient annotations and cited books dating to the period from the Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty as well as the corresponding unearthed documents and overseas Chinese books, conducts in-depth collation and research on relevant documents, and explores and restores the ancient books of the pre-Tang Dynasty to the greatest extent, with a view to investigating the academic history of the pre-Tang Dynasty, the history of philology and their evolution.

Professor Zhao Jiancheng

Book of Songs from Chu Bamboo Slips of Warring States Period Housed at Anhui University 

Silk book Laozi from Mawangdui Han Tombs

Remnants of the Book of Han: Biography of Yang Xiong housed at Kyoto University 

It is reported that the National Social Sciences Fund for Rare Fields of Knowledge Research lends special support for projects that are of great significance or that fill a gap in national development, civilization preservation, and cultural security. The academic team project was added as a new item in 2020.

（Edited and translated by Nankai News Team.)