China is preparing to submit Shuishu, or the written language of the Sui ethnic minority, to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as an oral and intangible heritage of humanity.

Many Chinese and overseas linguists referred to Shuishu as the "living fossil" of pictographic characters and an important component part of the long-standing Chinese culture. The Central Archives listed the collection of books written in Shuishu as one of the 40 superior archives in March 2002.

Pan Chaolin, a noted folklorist specializing in Shuishu, is making essential preparations for the application.

Experts have found that large amount of archaism originated from Central China have been preserved because the ancestors of this ethnic group migrated from northern China.

By comparison, Chinese experts discovered a dozen of symbols inthe written language of Sui ethnic minority are exactly same as symbols on pottery wares unearthed from the Xia Dynasty (2100 BC -1600 BC), the first ever recorded historical period in China. It indicates that the written symbols of this ethnic group belonged to a section of the ancient Xia culture. The ancestors of the Sui ethnicity existed in the primitive society.

Now the people of Sui ethnic group, numbered approximately 407,000, live on the Yunnan and Guizhou Plateau in southwest China.
 
(Xinhua News Agency September 22, 2004)