Oracle Bone Dynasty： Carefully Polishing the Time and Space Span from Oracle Bone Inscriptions to Digitalization

From February 22nd to 27th, the six-episode documentary "Oracle Bone Dynasty" produced by the Film and Television Drama Documentary Center of the Central Radio and Television General Station was broadcast on CCTV Record Channel. Taking Oracle Bone Inscriptions as the breakthrough point, the documentary presents a heavy audio-visual historical text for the audience.

Author: Shi Tongyu Lv Qiang

In the eyes of China scholars, the important position of Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties is hard to surpass. It goes without saying that the important position of the Shang Dynasty, which is a link between the preceding and the following in the three generations, is "the mysterious bird of destiny, and the Shang Dynasty comes into being when it descends". As long as we pay attention to Confucius, who claimed to be "a person who was born in Yin Dynasty at the beginning" (Historical Records Confucius Family), people will pay tribute to this ancient dynasty.

From February 22 to 27, 2022, the six-episode documentary "Oracle Bone Dynasty" produced by the Film and Television Drama Documentary Center of the Central Radio and Television General Station was broadcast on CCTV Record Channel. Taking Oracle Bone Inscriptions as the breakthrough point, this documentary, on the basis of fully exploiting the expert resources and profoundly grasping the frontier academic pulse, restores the key information of Chinese civilization that cannot be forgotten and misread to the greatest extent through the Oracle inscriptions engraved on the bones of tortoise shells and beasts and by means of digital technology. This is a heavy audio-visual historical text presented to the audience by archaeologists, historians, ancient writers and TV workers in the new era.

The theme is significant. Ask about the spiritual source of Chinese culture.

From Zuo Zhuan’s words are full of ambition, and literature is full of words (Zuo Zhuan Xiang Gong’s Twenty-five Years) to Plato’s Fei De Ruopian, from the "linguistic turn" of western philosophy to McLuhan’s "media is information", from Derrida’s "Logocentrism" to Debray’s "media domain" perspective, thinkers at all times and in all countries. In the hustle and bustle of the concept of the media, Marx’s famous questioning can be said to be right: "What is Fama next to the printing house square?" Here, we might as well follow Marx’s theoretical path to ask: Without Oracle Bone Inscriptions, where is the root of Chinese ritual and music civilization?

The documentary "Oracle Bone Dynasty" casts its communication perspective on Oracle Bone Inscriptions’s value choice, which embodies profound humanistic accumulation, profound historical feeling and deep spiritual exploration. To fully understand the development of a civilization, the technical means to record, store and transmit information is the core system. For Shang Dynasty, Oracle Bone Inscriptions was undoubtedly the cultural infrastructure for the development of this ancient civilization.

A broad perspective shows the real daily life of Shang society.

In today’s historians, the grand narrative of focusing on historical documents and writing emperors and princes has long been unable to frame the conceptual dimension of researchers. Turning the research perspective to the study of the history of material civilization in the infinitely rich social life of human beings has gradually become a prominent school since the French yearbook school represented by Braudel.

The documentary "Oracle Bone Dynasty" presents the research results of social life history and costume history in Shang Dynasty by means of digital communication. At the same time, the creative team of the reception desk skillfully chose the character Fu Hao, and vividly laid out the formation process of "Wu Ding Zhongxing", the first flourishing age recorded in Chinese history, from a brand-new perspective.

The queen’s well-being of Wu Ding, the king of Shang Dynasty, is obviously a research topic worthy of careful structure by Chinese and foreign women history researchers. The image of a woman who is both a high priest and a military general in the ancient China society of "the great event of the country is to sacrifice to Rong" (Zuo Zhuan became a public for thirteen years) is so noble and heroic. Through the reappearance of Fu Hao, a historical figure in Oracle Bone Dynasty, it is not difficult to realize what kind of glory and dream this ancient "professional woman" has, and a healthy, bright and fresh imagination of Shu Lang suddenly opens between the smooth lines of tortoise shell and beast bones. If we take into account the background that the philosophers of the Five Classics and historical books of past dynasties did not say a word about such a great woman, then the profound and broad historical vision of Oracle Bone Dynasty, which is constantly expanding through Oracle Bone Inscriptions, reminds the audience to re-examine the profound connotation of the multi-faceted Chinese civilization. Compared with the vast social life world in China, the people and events that can enter the voluminous China cultural classics are probably just a drop in the ocean. On the land of China, how many unknown wonderful performances have been performed.

Technology empowers innovation, niche circle and mass communication.

How to maintain the readability of visual video texts at a certain level in order to complete the public dissemination of the relatively small palace-level culture like Shang civilization is an unavoidable problem for the creative team of Oracle Bone Dynasty. The core of this problem is the creative transformation and innovative development of the ancient culture centered on Oracle Bone Inscriptions and bronzes. This problem is also in front of Oracle Bone Inscriptions’s readers. In the narration of the program, we can clearly touch the attempts of "black technology" such as artificial intelligence, digital model, simulation and data acquisition to help decipher Oracle Bone Inscriptions and restore bronzes. Such efforts also make the viewer not regard the hard work of ancient philologists and archaeologists as a fear of the road, and complete a bird’s eye view of the ancient civilization spirit in a full of interest.

In people’s impression, the study of Oracle Bone Inscriptions’s "unpopular juexue" is often associated with the "burning ointment and oil for the future, and keeping the poor for years". In the documentary, the audience saw that there are still more than 2,000 Oracle characters that have not been deciphered. In 2016, China Literature Museum offered a reward of 100,000 yuan for Oracle Bone Inscriptions’s decoding problem. Two years after the announcement, only one decoding result of the word "Tun" in Oracle Bone Inscriptions won the prize. The team led by Mo Bofeng, a professor at Oracle Bone Inscriptions Research Center of Capital Normal University, used artificial intelligence technology to track this. Mo Bofeng said frankly that in the computer age, cross-border integration of new technologies is also essential to overcome the super-difficult problem of Oracle Bone Inscriptions’s deciphering. I can’t help feeling: standing on the shoulders of Luo Zhenyu, Wang Guowei, Guo Moruo and Dong Zuobin, scholars who have made pioneering contributions to the study of Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and the research tools of digital technology have been added to the hands of later generations of scholars, the touching stories locked in the bones of tortoise shells and beasts will reappear in the world.

At this point of writing, the author reminds me of a passage from Confucius: "I can speak of the summer ceremony, but I can’t justify it;" Yin liwu can speak, but song is not enough. The literature is insufficient, so I can levy it. " (Eight Letters of the Analects of Confucius) Perhaps the documentary Oracle Bone Dynasty can make up for Confucius’ regret of "insufficient literature".

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