Two volumes of the over 2,300-year-old Chu Silk Manuscripts arrived at Beijing Capital International Airport on Sunday morning after being returned by the Smithsonian's National Museum of Asian Art on Friday.
The silk manuscripts, which consist of three volumes, were unearthed in 1942 from the Zidanku site in Changsha, central China's Hunan Province, and were illegally taken to the United States in 1946. They are currently the only known silk manuscripts from the Warring States period (475-221 BC).
A team from China's National Cultural Heritage Administration traveled to the United States and returned with the second and third volumes of the silk manuscripts, known as the "Wuxing Ling" and the "Gongshou Zhan."
The returned volumes will be sent to the administration's cultural relics warehouse after inspection and will be displayed to the public at the National Museum of China in July.
