The Chinese licence to excavate, 1935 to 1939

The law of 2 June 1930 on the preservation of ancient objects made everything in the ground the State's and let only academic bodies under the central or a provincial government dig, on a licence the Ministries of Education and of the Interior issued together; a foreign learned body could only help such a body, and the Commission sent an inspector to every dig. Licence No. 1 went to the Academia Sinica for Anyang on 9 April 1935.

No licence of the period has been found, so the paper Bearer prints for China is a reconstruction in Chinese, and the office says so above the form.

Bearer makes an investigator's papers for Call of Cthulhu and any 1920s or 1930s tabletop campaign: the passport a consul would have filled in, with the visas and frontier stamps a campaign leaves in it, and the permits, certificates and tickets of the period, to print or to share.

An example

Open this example in the office

The paper

A reconstruction

This paper is a reconstruction. No licence of the period has been found: its words are built from the law of 1930 (articles 8, 10, 11 and 12) and from what is known of licence No. 1 of 9 April 1935 (the body, the period, the place, the leader, the inspector); its layout, a column-set official form read top to bottom and right to left, is an invention. The law is real; the paper is not a copy of one.

The same paper elsewhere

• Permits to dig by country

Still to be confirmed

• the whole paper: no licence of 1935-1939 has been found, neither its words nor its layout. What would settle it: a photograph of a 採取古物執照 (licence No. 1 is held, it seems, by the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei).
• one year when no expiry is typed in. What would settle it: a licence read.
• the type begins with licence No. 1 of 9 April 1935, known from a secondary account. What would settle it: the licence itself, or the Commission's register.

Sources

• National Government of the Republic of China; text on Chinese Wikisource from the Government Gazette (國民政府公報), 古物保存法 (Law on the Preservation of Ancient Objects), passed 24 May 1930, promulgated 2 June 1930, in force 15 June 1931; re-enacted 10 November 1935, art. 7: everything buried or brought up from the ground belongs to the State; art. 8: only academic bodies under the central or a provincial government may dig, on a licence (採掘執照) the Ministries of Education and of the Interior issue together after review by the Central Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities; digging without it is punished as theft; art. 10: a foreign learned body or specialist may take part only in helping such a body, with the Commission's prior approval; art. 11: the Commission sends an inspector; art. 12: the finds kept for study for a fixed period with the Commission's approval; art. 13: ancient objects circulate only within the country. (read directly)
• 徐敏 (Xu Min), 中国文物报 (China Cultural Relics News), 5 January 2024, p. 8, 中国考古发掘执照制度的发展 (The development of China's excavation licence system), licence No. 1, 採取古物執照, issued on 9 April 1935 by the Ministries of the Interior and of Education to the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica for Yinxu (Anyang); it named the excavating body, the period, the place, the leader and the inspectors; applicants filed three copies of a form with the Central Commission and paid two yuan for the licence and two for the stamp. (secondary source)
• Department of State, Washington, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1929 vol. II docs. 874-881 and 1930 vol. II docs. 648-649: the Roy Chapman Andrews expedition, May-June 1929: the Chinese society for the preservation of antiquities asks that the American Museum's expedition be half Chinese with two leaders and leave the originals in China; the Museum refuses and the 1929 season is lost; the 1928 collections are released; February 1930: the Foreign Minister says the antiquities law will decide; May 1930: 'everything had been settled' for the season of 1930, the last, permission being refused in 1931. (read directly)

Open the passport office · MGS Toolbox