Shi Jing (also known as Book of Songs) is China’s earliest anthology of verse, comprising 305 poems dating from the early Western Zhou to the mid–Spring and Autumn period (approximately the 11th to 6th centuries BCE). In addition, there are six poems listed only by title without surviving text—known as the “Six Lost Hymns of the Flute” (笙诗六篇)—entitled Nan Gai (南陔), Bai Hua (白华), Hua Shu (华黍), You Geng (由庚), Chong Qiu (崇丘), and You Yi (由仪). Over the course of thousands of years, portions of this anthology have been lost to history—until now.

On November 9, 2025 (Beijing time), reporters from Guangming Online—the official website of a Chinese newspaper—learned at the “Tenth Anniversary Symposium on the Archaeological Discoveries from the Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun and Han Dynasty Regional Culture” in Nanchang that 1,200 bamboo slips containing the Book of Songs were unearthed from the tomb. These slips bear the inscription: “Three hundred and five poems in total, one thousand and seventy-six sections, seven thousand two hundred and seventy-four words,” confirming that the Haihun bamboo-slip Book of Songs is a complete version of the classic. This marks the first discovery of a full version of the Book of Songs from the Qin–Han period.

This means that the poetry lost for a millennium in China has, at long last, reemerged into the light of day.