Center for Ancient History Research of Henan University, officially established in September 2005, is the key research base of humanities and social sciences of the Education Department of Henan Province. It has three distinctive research directions: History of the Song Dynasty, History of the Pre-Qin, Qin and Han dynasties, and History of Ancient Chinese Culture. Chinese Ancient History specialty is an important supporting discipline in the Research Center for Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development, which is the key humanities research base of the Ministry of Education. The center has such research institutes as the Laboratory for Digitization of Classic Literature and Cultural Relics supported by the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Education, the Research Institute for the History of the Song Dynasty supported by the Open Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences in Colleges and Universities of Henan Province, the Research Institute for the Song Culture jointly run by Henan University and Kaifeng City, and Henan University Institute of Chinese ideology and Culture. The center has currently 33 full-time academic staff, including 14 professors, 12 associate professors, and 7 lecturers. Of these, 28 have doctorate degrees, 2 receive special allowance from the State Council, and 27 are honored as Outstanding Talents at national level or provincial level. In the last five years, the center has played an important role in the development of the history subject of Henan University: 

 (1) we led the university’s history discipline to obtain doctorate authorization in the two first-level disciplines of Chinese History and Archaeology, postdoctoral research stations of the two first-level disciplines of Chinese History and Archaeology, and two provincial-level key disciplines of Chinese history and Archaeology;  

(2) we established three secondary disciplines, namely, Historical Philology, History of Chinese Historiography, and Historical Geography; (3) we are supported to conduct several educational reform projects such as National Characteristic Specialty of History, Provincial Quality Courses of Ancient Chinese History, and Provincial Teaching Team of Ancient Chinese History. Researchers of our center have published more than 200 papers in History Studies, Chinese History Studies, Ethnic Studies, and other journals at home and abroad. Of these, 21 were reproduced and excerpted by Xinhua Abstracts or Copy Database of Renmin University of China. The center has undertook nearly 40 scientific research projects at or above the provincial level, including 12 of National Social Science Foundation, 17 of Ministry of Education and Henan Province Social Science, 8 of the Committee on Collation and Research of Ancient Books in Colleges and Universities, and 9 horizontal projects. We have published more than 30 monographs, including Study of Price in the Song Dynasty, Study of the Pre-Qin Schools of Thought, History and Thought, and so on.