Jin Liang was the director of the royal palace complex in Shenjing (now Shenyang), the original Manchu dynastic center and Qing empire’s secondary capital city. Jin was an early advocate for the creation of a state-sponsored gallery for the public display of the imperial collections, but his ideas were disregarded. Jin Liang specialized in oracle bone script, one of the oldest forms of Chinese written language. During the Shang Dynasty (16th-11th century BC), the script was inscribed into tortoise shells or animal bones as part of divination rituals. In 1936 an archive of thousands of oracle bones was discovered in excavations of the Shang dynasty capital at Anyang. This set of panels is dedicated by the artist to the donor’s mother who was from a prominent Han family in Shenyang.