Yin Xu (Yinxu Ruins)

UNESCO World Heritage Site (2006); National Key Cultural Relic Protection Unit; Capital Of The Late Shang Dynasty · Anyang, Henan

The capital of the late Shang dynasty, abandoned about 1046 BC and lost for three thousand years until farmers near Anyang began turning up inscribed bones that apothecaries were grinding up as dragon bones. Excavation from 1928 uncovered palace foundations, royal tombs, chariot burials and, above all, the oracle bones: more than 150,000 pieces of ox scapula and turtle plastron inscribed with the questions Shang kings put to their ancestors about harvests, childbirth, war and the weather. Those inscriptions are the earliest developed Chinese writing, and the direct ancestor of the characters in use today, which makes this the place where the written record of China begins. The site spreads over about thirty square kilometres of farmland; what visitors see is the palace and temple district with its reconstructed halls, the tomb of Fu Hao - a royal consort and general, and the only unlooted Shang royal tomb ever found - and, since February 2024, a large new Yinxu Museum holding nearly four thousand objects, most never shown before.

Yinxu Road, Yindu District, Anyang, Anyang, Henan, China

Daily 8:30-17:30 year-round with ticket sales stopping at 16:30; entry is by real-name booking up to 7 days ahead in one of three time slots (8:30-11:30, 11:30-14:30 and 14:30-16:30).

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