In 2002, more than 38,000 Qin bamboo slips were unearthed in Liye Town, Longshan County, located in the hinterland of Mount Wuling in Hunan Province. This discovery of Qin bamboo slips in Liye has helped fill in gaps in the historical materials of the Qin Dynasty. It is one of the most important archeological discoveries in China since the dawn of the 21st century. The number of Qin bamboo slips unearthed in Liye is 10 times the sum of previous Qin bamboo slips discovered in China, totaling more than 200,000 characters. They present a panoramic view of the county administration and social life of the Qin Dynasty, outlining a vivid and vast picture of the unification of the empire, and giving us a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the political system and social life of the Qin Dynasty.
This exhibition selects 146 Qin bamboo slips from the collections of the Hunan Provincial Institute of Archaeology and the Liye Qin Slips Museum, combined with 31 Qin Dynasty cultural relics from the National Museum of China and the multiplication table brick from Shenzhen Museum, to fully demonstrate the reality of the effective implementation of the Qin Dynasty’s centralized system from the perspectives of a small town, daily life and county administration during the Qin Dynasty period.