Zhang San's Little Shop

Zhang San's Little Shop

The world-renowned Shuidonggou Site, as one of China’s earliest Paleolithic cultural sites to undergo systematic excavation and research, has been the focus of painstaking efforts by domestic and international archaeologists since its discovery and initial excavation in 1923 by French paleontologists Teilhard de Chardin and Émile Licent. It has also benefited from the quiet contributions of ordinary people. Eighty-four years ago, when archaeologists turned their investigative gaze to Shuidonggou, it became linked to “Zhang San’s Little Shop,” which originally had no direct connection to the site.

Zhang San, whose real name was Zhang Zi, was of Han ethnicity and a native of Shuidonggou Village in Lingwu. He was born in 1894 and passed away in 1965. Of his four brothers, he was the third, hence he was called Zhang San, and the small shop he ran came to be known as “Zhang San’s Little Shop.” Zhang San’s first wife died young, and later he remarried a woman 12 years his junior, Zhao Zhangshi, who was 15 at the time. They had no further children. Zhang San and his first wife had only one daughter, who married and left home. By the 1950s, Zhang San and his wife became a “Five Guarantees” household in the village. Zhang San passed away in 1965 and was buried one kilometer south of Shuidonggou. Zhao Zhangshi, who lived to be 85, passed away in 1993 and was buried alongside him.

Originally, during the construction of the Great Wall in the mid-Ming Dynasty, a major road called the Ningyan (from Ningxia, now Yinchuan, to Yan, now Dingbian in Shaanxi) Highway was built within the wall. This attracted many merchants traveling to and from Ningxia (more on this later), who often stayed at Shuidonggou inns or “dined and rested” (i.e., ate, took short breaks, fed their animals, etc.). By the latter half of the 1920s, with the completion of highways such as those from Rencun Ferry and Yinchuan to Lingwu, the number of merchants crossing at Hengcheng Ferry gradually decreased, and the Ningyan Highway fell into disuse. Consequently, the Shuidonggou area declined, leaving only four or five households. Prior to this, the predecessor of Zhang San’s Little Shop was a large carriage and horse inn run by Zhang San’s father, Zhang Tianyi. The inn was about 500 meters north of the Shuidonggou Site, situated along the essential route between Yinchuan in Ningxia and Inner Mongolia and northern Shaanxi. At that time, the inn was quite sizable, with seven main rooms and five side rooms on both the east and west sides. Most travelers coming from east or west would cross the Yellow River at Hengcheng Ferry and usually stay at the inn by evening. When Zhang Tianyi managed the inn, business was thriving, and the family lived comfortably. By the 1920s, due to old age, Zhang Tianyi handed the inn over to his sons to manage in rotation. However, with the completion of the Yinchuan-Lingwu Highway, most travelers crossed the Yellow River at Rencun Ferry. More importantly, due to border issues, there were few people passing through Shuidonggou, so business at Zhang San’s Little Shop dwindled. The inn struggled, most of its buildings were demolished, and the once-large carriage inn shrank into a small shop, run solely by Zhang San, hence it became known as “Zhang San’s Little Shop.” Zhang San managed the shop until the cooperative movement after the liberation. After Zhang San passed away in 1965, his wife Zhao Zhangshi lived there alone. In 1972, she moved to Qiaocun Village in Linhe Township, more than ten kilometers away, due to poor health, where she was cared for by relatives. That same year, Zhang San’s Little Shop was demolished. According to elders who remembered Zhang San, he was of medium height, slightly hunched, with thin eyes bloodshot and a face covered in spots, his cheeks flushed with an unhealthy redness.

Because of its close connection to the discovery of the Shuidonggou cultural site, Mr. Jia Lanpo, who had studied under the famous French paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin, wrote in his 1982 memoir “The Paleontology Master I Knew – Teilhard de Chardin”: “Shuidonggou is a desert area, with no inhabitants within at least five kilometers. But there was a small shop called ‘Zhang San’s Little Shop,’ set up just for travelers coming and going. The shop could accommodate at most four or five people and did not serve meals; guests had to bring their own grain, and the shop would cook for them. When Teilhard de Chardin and Émile Licent were excavating there, locals rarely saw foreigners, and their appearance, clothing, and habits were very different, which attracted a lot of attention. Even today, although both foreigners have passed away, people still talk about them with great interest. It is said that these two Western guests ate only potatoes and eggs every day, and having a pancake was a rare treat. Flour was hard to come by nearby, let alone coffee or milk.”

In 1920, Belgian missionary Kent traveled from Yinchuan in Ningxia to Shaanxi. He crossed the Yellow River at Hengcheng Ancient Ferry and followed the “Ningyan Highway” through what is now Linhe Town in Lingwu. He stayed overnight at Zhang San’s Little Shop. While cooling off in the open space outside the shop, he accidentally noticed flickers of will-o’-the-wisps on the cliffs across the Qingshui River. This strange phenomenon caught his attention. The next day, when he went to investigate, he saw some peculiar stones and animal bone fragments exposed on the half-wall of the cliff. He borrowed a wooden ladder from Zhang San, climbed up the half-wall of the cliff, and collected a woolly rhinoceros skull fossil and some stone tools. Overjoyed, Kent informed French priest and paleontologist Émile Licent and Father Teilhard de Chardin, then director of the Beijiang Museum in Tianjin, China. These experts understood the historical significance and social impact of Kent’s discovery and hoped to excavate the site themselves first.

In June 1923, Teilhard de Chardin and Émile Licent stayed at Zhang San’s Little Shop to conduct scientific investigations and excavations at Shuidonggou. Teilhard marked the location of the little shop on the map he created, and their excavation report was first published abroad. Thus, “Zhang San’s Little Shop” gained fame in the international paleontology community. While searching beneath the northern cliff of the Qingshui River, Teilhard discovered ash marks on the cliff wall. He ran back and gave Zhang San five silver dollars, gesturing for him to find a large ladder. Then, he and Émile Licent returned to the northern cliff, where they unearthed some animal skull fossils. Overjoyed, they took out the wine they had brought and invited Zhang San to drink with them — it was the first time in his life that Zhang San had tasted wine. After drinking, Teilhard and Émile Licent were ecstatic, singing and dancing excitedly. Teilhard also grasped Zhang San’s hand tightly and said in broken Chinese, “Cooperation!”

In the 1920s, transportation was very inconvenient. Teilhard and his team traveled in a “mule litter,” which was a sleeping bed with a tent pulled by two mules, one in front and one in the back. They came to China to conduct research on Cenozoic geology (i.e., the fifth and most recent era of geological time, divided into the Tertiary and Quaternary periods, spanning from 70 million years ago to the present. During this time, the Earth’s crust experienced strong orogenic movements, Mesozoic reptiles became extinct, mammals flourished, biology reached a highly developed stage, similar to modern times, and humans appeared in the later period) and paleontology (referring to organisms that lived in past geological ages and are mostly now extinct, including ancient plants, ancient invertebrates, and ancient vertebrates. The remains of ancient organisms are mostly fossilized, except for a few preserved under special conditions, such as mammoths in permafrost or insects in amber, such as trilobites and dinosaurs). They arrived in Tianjin from Paris on May 13 and headed straight for Inner Mongolia’s Ordos via Beijing on June 11. Starting from Baotou, they traveled westward along the left bank of the Yellow River, crossed the Wula Mountains, and arrived at Shuidonggou, where they stayed overnight at “Zhang San’s Little Shop.” Following the planned archaeological schedule, Teilhard hired local workers to excavate five sites numbered F1 to F5 on the northern cliff of the Qingshui River. Teilhard was often seen photographing or digging, and he prohibited outsiders from entering the excavation area, making the work seem quite mysterious. After forty or fifty days, over 300 kilograms of stone tools and fossils, such as scrapers and pointed tools, all from the Paleolithic Age, were unearthed at just the F1 site, along with evidence of ancient human use of fire. The unearthed stone tools were packed into wooden crates and transported abroad by nine mules and two camels. Before departing, Teilhard gave Zhang San some fabric and several bottles of red wine, shook his hand vigorously, and said they would return.

After returning to their countries, Teilhard and Émile Licent sent the stone tool specimens and excavation reports they had collected to Professor Boule, a leading global archaeology authority and stone tool expert at the time. Together, they spent five full years conducting in-depth research on the Shuidonggou stone tools. Eventually, they jointly produced a detailed, multi-page archaeological report on Shuidonggou, which was officially published in the West in 1928, shocking the global archaeological community. The report concluded that the stone tools found in Shuidonggou belonged to the late Mousterian (or Neanderthal, dating back approximately 100,000 to 40,000 years, typically represented by human fossils found in Neanderthal, Germany, collectively referred to as “ancient humans” or “Neanderthals”) or the early Aurignacian (or Cro-Magnon, dating back approximately 40,000 to 50,000 years, represented by the “Cro-Magnon humans” found in the Cro-Magnon Cave in France, also called “modern humans” or “Homo sapiens”) cultural periods. The publication of this discovery report drew attention from the global academic community studying ancient humans, making the Shuidonggou cultural site in Lingwu, representing Ningxia’s oldest culture, famous both at home and abroad.

In 2006, based on the recollections of Zhao Long, the brother-in-law of Zhang San’s wife, the Shuidonggou Tourism Development Company restored “Zhang San’s Little Shop.” They also created busts of Teilhard de Chardin, Émile Licent, Chinese archaeologists Pei Wenzhong, and Jia Lanpo, who made outstanding contributions to the excavation and research of the Shuidonggou cultural site in the 1920s and beyond, in order to commemorate them. At the same time, the restoration of “Zhang San’s Little Shop” also honored the farmer Zhang San and his world-famous little shop, which contributed to the excavation of the Shuidonggou cultural site.

Changcheng Village: Located 2 kilometers southeast of Zhangdian Urban Area, Changcheng Village covers an area of 1,140 mu, with 815 mu of cultivated land and 280 mu of forest land, including 200 mu of specialty planting mainly for valuable flowers, plants, and greening trees. In 2009, it was designated as part of urban agriculture, with plans to expand urban agriculture by another 200 mu in 2011. The village has a population of 1,410, with 564 households and 53 Party members. There are 13 enterprises in the village, with fixed asset investments totaling 120 million yuan and annual sales revenue of 180 million yuan. In 2009, the new Changguo Concrete Company was established, with fixed asset investment of 7 million yuan. Residential life... Detailed information on Changcheng Village++