Slips reveal emperor's pursuit of immortality

Editor:李莎宁
Source:ChinaDaily
Updated:2017-12-27 09:17:28

　　CHANGSHA - The pursuit of immortality was commonplace among the most powerful of people in ancient China - emperors.

　　According to new archaeological findings, China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang, even went so far as to make it a government function, more than 2,000 years ago. A set of wooden slips found in Hunan province contain the emperor's executive order for a nationwide search for the elixir of life and official replies from local governments.

　　Zhang Chunlong, a researcher at the Hunan Institute of Archaeology, said the emperor's decree reached frontier regions and remote villages.