China's first museum on bamboo slips and wooden tablets opened on Monday in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province.

This museum, covering an area of two hectares, houses more than 100,000 bamboo slips and wooden tablets dating back over 1,700 years, which have been unearthed in downtown Changsha since October 1996.

The slips and tablets, which were inscribed with characters, recorded in detail the political, economic, military, cultural and geographic information in the ancient Changsha prefecture which was under the rule of Kingdom WU (222 AD-280 AD), according to sources with the local government.

Ancient Chinese wrote on either wood tablets or bamboo slips, and paper only began to be used in the late Eastern Han Period (25AD-220 AD).

To protect these precious cultural relics, the municipal government of Changsha allocated more than 78 million yuan (US$9.75 million) to build the museum.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 27, 2005)