What might tangible artifacts tell us about the shang

When ancient cities get lost in China, they get lost in places like Anyang. The ebbs and flows of 20th-century history rushed across this part of the Yellow River plain, leaving their traces like so much jumbled driftwood. Outside of Anyang stands the tomb of warlord Yuan Shikai, who briefly seized control of the nation in the 1910s. Anyang's new downtown-white tile, blue glass-is a monument to another conqueror, the modernization of post-reform China. Wedged between the tomb and the town, there's an old airstrip that was built by Japanese imperialists during their occupation in the 1930s