Juyan, located in Ejine Banner in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region's Alshaa League, was once a key stop and military stronghold on the ancient Silk Road. A large number of soldiers were stationed there year-round to guard against invasions, Zhao explains.

A special exhibition at the Inner Mongolia Museum focuses on Hanera slips unearthed from the Juyan region. The exhibition through March 15 features about 400 items, including Juyan wooden and bamboo slips, artifacts and documents, divided into six thematic sections. They span from daily life in Juyan during the Neolithic Age to the armed frontier culture of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220).

What resonates most emotionally are the records of everyday life behind these wooden slips — they are the Han Dynasty's leave requests, shopping lists and family letters, forming a kind of encyclopedia of daily life written on wooden tablets.

"Each Juyan wooden slip is hard-won," says Wei Jian, director of the Institute of Chinese Borderland Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. As one of the archaeologists involved in excavating the Juyan slips, he once endured sandstorms and searched under the scorching sun, all to bring these long-buried wooden slips back to light after a millennium of sleep.