China's Buried Kingdoms

Book excerpt: The valley of the Huan River is wide and flat, green when the spring crops of the farming collectives sprout in the fertile soil, parched and dusty under the baking sun of the northern China summer. On the river's south bank spreads Anyang. This modest provincial town has a railway station, but it is hardly the place where one would expect travellers from around the world to alight. Yet hundreds of visitors come here each year with one purpose in mind - to see the remains of one of the great civilizations of ancient China, the more than three-millennium-old capital of Shang that lies less than two miles northwest of town. The area is recognized as one of the world's foremost archaeological sites. It is also one of the most dug.