Pu said Huang was very confident of his knowledge of ancient Chinese. "Out of the 1,000-odd oracle bone characters, Huang has mastered 700-800," he said. Niu Jing, Huang's class adviser ...

10 ORACLE BONE: CRACKING MADE ON THE XINHAI (DAY 48); NO QUICK VICTORY ON THE YIN (DAY 51?). APPROVED. IT WILL RAIN ON JIAHAI (?) MS in Chinese on oxen scapula bone, Xiaotun, China, 14th-12th c. BC, 1 ...

The surviving oracle bones are the earliest existing form of Chinese writing. Many of the roughly 5,000 characters in the "oracle bone script" are still used in modern Chinese (some versions of ...