On the afternoon of October 28, 2016, Ye Shuxian, Chair Professor of Zhiyuan College, Shanghai Jiaotong University, was invited to pay a visit to Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), delivering a wonderful lecture titled “Symbol Decoding about A Malicious Banquet at Hongmen” to the teachers and students in the second class of “Lecture Forum Series from Cultural Celebrities” held by SUSTech. Professor Ye Shuxian started with the archetypal research on the great tradition of Chinese culture to decipher the decoding of jade symbols in the text A Malicious Banquet at Hongmen written by Sima Qian, a famous ancient Chinese litterateur and historian, revealing the root cause of the lost myths and beliefs of jade in the history of the Chinese Civilization, and explaining the mystery of history about why Xiang Yu gave up killing Liu Bang. The lecture forum was chaired by Chen Yuehong, Director of Humanities Center of SUSTech.

 Professor Ye Shuxian also works as a researcher at the Institute of Literature, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), Vice Chairman of the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association, President of the Chinese Institute of Literary Anthropology, and President of the Chinese Society of Myth.

 In his lecture, Professor Ye introduced great tradition and little tradition as well as the Quadruple Method of Argument in literary anthropology. Through investigation of tombs and researches on literatures, the has-been jade culture of “worship for jade & jade as the sole burial object” surfaced finally. Built on such a culture, Professor Ye reviewed the jade in the Banquet and gave a new explanation on the historical event that Xiang Yu did not kill Liu Bang – white jade symbolized the rule and power at that time, so Xiang Yu accepted the jade presented by Liu Bang and his killing desire completely vanished.  

  Through his researches on jade culture, Professor Ye pointed out that the importance China attaches to jade is far above the silk, so the “Silk Road” actually should be the “Jade Road”, a road to fetch jades from Hetian, Xinjiang to the Central Plain.

 Professor Ye brought a new view to look back to the history. In the Q&A session, the students actively asked him many questions about the source, myth and historical facts of Heshibi (a priceless gem) and discussed them with him.