{"id":72235,"date":"2025-06-11T01:47:24","date_gmt":"2025-06-10T16:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jun\/10\/qiu-xigui-obituary"},"modified":"2025-06-11T01:47:24","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T16:47:24","slug":"qiu-xigui-obituary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=72235","title":{"rendered":"Qiu Xigui obituary"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Paleographer, historian and expert on ancient Chinese writing<\/p>\n<p>Qiu Xigui, who has died aged 89, first made his mark as a paleographer, a scholar of ancient writing, through researching Chinese \u201coracle bones\u201d. These are divinations inscribed on animal scapulae \u2013 shoulder blades \u2013 or turtle plastrons \u2013 the bottom part of their shells. The characters they employ are the earliest known forerunners of the modern Chinese writing system.<\/p>\n<p>Their appearance in the antiquities market led to the excavation from the late 1920s of the last capital of the Shang dynasty (c1600-1050 BC) at <a href=\"https:\/\/whc.unesco.org\/en\/list\/1114\/\">Yinxu<\/a>, near Anyang, in Henan province.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jun\/10\/qiu-xigui-obituary\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paleographer, historian and expert on ancient Chinese writingQiu Xigui, who has died aged 89, first made his mark as a paleographer, a scholar of ancient writing, through researching Chinese \u201coracle bones\u201d. These are divinations inscribed on animal sca&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4789,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1449,511,50,614,752,1967,3336,3337,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-books","category-china","category-history","category-history-books","category-languages","category-seattle","category-soas","category-world-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4789"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72236,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72235\/revisions\/72236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}