Anyang

UNESCO-listed Yin Xu — the late Shang dynasty capital and the earliest Chinese writing site (oracle bones). One of the cradles of Chinese civilisation; an under-touristed essential for serious history travellers.

Anyang's Yin Xu site is the historical core of the late Shang dynasty (~1300-1046 BCE) — the latest of the early Bronze Age Chinese capitals before the Zhou conquest. UNESCO-listed in 2006, the Yin Xu site preserves the foundations of palaces and temples, royal tombs, sacrificial pits, and the Anyang Bronze Workshop foundations.

The oracle bones excavated at Yin Xu since 1899 are the earliest substantial corpus of Chinese writing — over 150,000 bone and shell fragments with divinatory inscriptions, the direct ancestor of the modern Chinese script. The Yin Xu Museum displays substantial artefacts; the National Museum of Chinese Writing (in central Anyang) provides the broader context.