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2

collection was unfortunately lost, so ^[[I]] did not see them at all.  He further said that these bones are continually coming out of the soil; a certain gentleman has obtained a complete tortoise shell.

2.  A Visit to the Curio Market.  The next day, on the thirteenth of August, it rained; the proposed trip to Hsiao-t'un was not carried out.  The day was spent to make inquiries about oracle bones in the curio-market.  In the city of An-yang, the  street from the Northern Gate to the Drum Tower is the busiest; next to it is the Main Street from the Western Gate.  Within the Western Gate, a curio-shop kept by a certain Chang has a number of fragments of the oracle bones about the size of finger-nails in store.  When asked about the place of their origin, the answer is: 'don't know'. Other curio-dealers were found to give the same answer, when the same query was made.  As a visitor from other places, I was not permitted to share the secret.  A more truthful person, however, was found in the store-keeper Wang, the owner of the Curio-shop Tsun-ku Chai(遵古齋) in Chung-lou Hsiang(鐘樓巷); he told me that in the beginning of the Minkuo era(民國初年), many of these bones were found.  Recently in the 9th('20), 14('25) and this year('28), large numbers have been dug out.  Some were not yet sold, he promised to look for these unsold bones for me.  He showed me also several tens that he had in keeping; they are all small, the largest is hardly more than an inch in length.  Judged by the characters, they seemed to be genuine enough.  Then he showed a number of forged pieces to me; he told me that the author of these forged pieces is Lan Pao-kuang(藍寶光).  The characters of these forged pieces were neatly carved; but they don't make any sense and some of the characters were incised upside down, so their spuriousness is marked on their very appearance. 

Transcription Notes:
I am Chinese and have competed the Chinese parts. -Watermelonely(Sept.17,2017) To person who left the comment below about non-Chinese linguists not using auto-translate for the characters: please let us know if there is an accurate translation website that you know of for Chinese. Also, please date comment entries to help ensure timely completion of final reviews. Let us know if there is any other way non-linguists can help -jeni92127 (11 Sept 2017) Please do not mark any documents for completion that have transcribed characters using autotranslate; all the characters transcribed are INCORRECT and need to be re-transcribed