China is preparing to submit Shuishu - the written language of the Sui ethnic minority - to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as a heritage of humanity.

　　Many chinese and overseas linguists regard Shuishu as a "living fossil" of pictographic characters and an important component of Chinese culture.

　　China's central Archives designated a collection of books written in Shuishu as "supremely important" in March 2002.

　　Pan chaolin, a noted folklorist specializing in Shuishu, is making essential preparations for the collection's inclusion.

　　Experts have discovered a great deal of ancient writings from Central China, where many ethnic groups migrated from the north.

　　Archaeologists discovered that a dozen symbols from the written language of the Sui ethnic minority match symbols on pottery unearthed from the Xia Dynasty (21st century-16th century BC), the first ever recorded historical period in China.

　　This indicates that the written symbols of this ethnic group had definite links to the Xia.

　　Members of the Sui ethnic group still exist. About 407,000 of them live on the Yunnan and Guizhou Plateau in southwest China.

　　(Xinhua)