In 1899, a scholar named Wang Yirong was sick with malaria. His doctor prescribed dragon bones -- fragments of ancient animal bone sold at traditional pharmacies. Wang noticed strange markings scratched into the surface. They were not random. They were writing, and they were more than three thousand years old. The bones had been coming from fields near a small village called Xiaotun, just outside Anyang in northern Henan. What lay beneath those fields was Yinxu: the lost capital of the Shang dynasty, the place where Chinese writing began.
The Shang people called their capital Dayi Shang -- the Great Settlement. The name Yin came later, applied by the succeeding Zhou dynasty. By the time of King Wu Ding, sometime around 1250 BCE, Yin had become a formidable center of power. Wu Ding launched military campaigns against surrounding tribes, expanding Shang territory and raising the dynasty to its zenith. The city sprawled across what would become 30 square kilometers of archaeological terrain -- the largest such site in China. Palaces rose on rammed-earth foundations. Bronze workshops cast ritual vessels using an elaborate section-mold process that produced works of astonishing complexity, including the Houmuwu ding, one of the largest ancient bronze objects ever found.
The oracle bones are Yinxu's signature discovery: 150,000 fragments of turtle shell and animal scapula inscribed with questions posed to ancestors and deities. Will it rain? Should the king go to war? Will the queen's pregnancy go well? The questions were carved, the bones heated until they cracked, and the pattern of cracks interpreted as answers. In 1917, the scholar Wang Guowei deciphered the royal names on the bones and reconstructed a complete Shang genealogy. It matched the account in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, written more than a thousand years later. A dynasty long dismissed as legend was suddenly, verifiably real.
Most of the royal tombs at Yinxu were looted centuries ago. One escaped. In 1976, archaeologist Zheng Zhenxiang uncovered the tomb of Fu Hao, wife of King Wu Ding and a military leader in her own right -- one of the few women known to have commanded armies in the ancient world. The tomb, dated to around 1250 BCE, was completely intact. Inside lay bronze vessels, jade ornaments, ivory cups, and weapons, along with six dog skeletons and the remains of sixteen enslaved people sacrificed to accompany the queen into death. The brutality of these funerary practices sits alongside the artistic mastery of the grave goods, a reminder that Shang civilization produced both extraordinary beauty and extraordinary cruelty.
After the Shang fell to the Zhou around 1046 BCE, Yin was abandoned. The city decayed into farmland, its palaces dissolving into soil. For three millennia the site lay forgotten, its oracle bones occasionally surfacing as folk medicine. Today, Yinxu is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, designated in 2006. A new museum opened in 2024, housing nearly 4,000 cultural relics and employing technologies including 3D visualization and interactive digital oracle bone displays. The site drew 140,000 visitors during the 2025 National Day holiday alone. Anyang has woven the Shang legacy into its modern identity, with oracle bone script appearing in bookstores, public art, and even radio calisthenics routines across the city.
Located at 36.123N, 114.319E near Anyang, northern Henan Province, close to the Hebei and Shanxi borders. The site lies under and around modern Anyang, partly beneath the airport. Nearest airport: Anyang Yuquan (ZHAY). The Huan River bisects the archaeological zone. Recommended viewing altitude: 3,000-5,000 feet AGL for sense of the site's 30 sq km scale.