Hanjian (Bamboo Slips of the Han Dynasties) is handed down from the Western and Eastern Han. During the Northern Zhou Period (557-581), books of bamboo slips from the Han Dynasty had been found in Juyan District. Bamboo slips of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220) were discovered in Gansu Province and other places during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). In modern times, the earliest bamboo slips produced during the Wei and Jin Dynasty (386-557) were discovered in an ancient site north of the Luobu Lake, which lies in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region.

In 1907, a few of Hanjian were discovered in Niya Site in the north of Minfeng County, Xinjiang Autonomous Region, and the next year more than 700 pieces of Hanjian were discovered in frontier fortress relic of the Han Dynasty, near Dunhuang County, Gansu Province. It was the first time that Hanjian was dug out in modern China. Since then more Hanjian was discovered in succession. The finds of Hanjian fall into two kinds: some were found in the northwest of frontier fortress relic of the Han Dynasty, called Biansan Hanjian for short; the others were found in tombs of the Han Dynasty, called Muzang Hanjian.

Biansai Hanjian has three subcategories:

The first one is Dunhuang Hanjian, which was unearthed from the frontier fortress relic of the Han Dynasty in Dunhuang County, Anxi County, and Jiuquan County of Gansu Province.

The second one is Juyan Hanjian, which was dug out from the frontier fortress relic of the Han Dynasty near both banks of the Ejina River, Gansu Province and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The third one is Luobupo Hanjian, which was dug out from defense relic of the Han Dynasty at the north bank of the Luobu Lake. The batch bamboo slips were unearthed near the Loulan Relic, hence Loulan Hanjian.

Biansai Hanjian, generally found in sites of government offices or beacon towers of frontier fortress regions, were left by government troops. Some of them were left on purpose and others were discarded as castoff.

Hanjian, as historical data, is important to study frontier fortress regions and the whole Han history. Hanjian has done some help to the study of many aspects, such as the frontier defense, system of opening up wasteland and growing food grain, military system, official system and administration system, as well as related society, economy and culture of the Han Dynasty.

Muzang Hanjian

A great number of bamboo slips and wood slips were excavated from toms of the Han Dynasty in Gansu, Shandon, Heibei and Qinghai provinces.

Many of unearthed ancient books from the Han Dynasty tombs had been lost for a long period, and some of them can be used to rectify current editions, and even to confirm the writing time. In addition, Hanjian helps to research on the development of ancient characters: the bamboo slips of the Eastern Han Dynasty show how Chinese characters evolved from the ancient official script to Bafen calligraphy and how grass-hand style came into being; while the bamboo slips of the mid and late periods of the Eastern Han Dynasty show the process that how official script evolved to regular script.