Slips reveal emperor's pursuit of immortality

CHANGSHA - The pursuit of immortality was commonplace among the most powerful of people in ancient China - emperors.

According to new archaeological findings, China's first emperor, Qin Shihuang, even went so far as to make it a government function, more than 2,000 years ago. A set of wooden slips found in Hunan province contain the emperor's executive order for a nationwide search for the elixir of life and official replies from local governments.

Zhang Chunlong, a researcher at the Hunan Institute of Archaeology, said the emperor's decree reached frontier regions and remote villages.