Due to the special funeral customs during China’s feudal society, there are many magical ancient tombs in our country. In the following content, we will introduce a mausoleum located in the Changping area of ??Beijing that has experienced many ups and downs.
To the north of Changping District, about ten kilometers away, there is such a Tianshou Mountain. As can be seen from the name of this mountain, its feng shui is naturally impeccable. And this is where the Ming Tombs are located.
Ming Tombs
The Ming Tombs were built from the reign of Emperor Chengzu of the Ming Dynasty until the death of Emperor Chongzhen. Emperors of the Ming Dynasty after Chengzu were buried here. This large-scale royal cemetery has experienced more than 600 years of historical changes. Although its above-ground buildings have been damaged many times, the underground palace has been completely preserved.
But it is a pity that not long after the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Ming Tombs, which had experienced hundreds of years of wind and frost, encountered unexpected disasters. One of the initiators of this incident is Mr. Guo Moruo, a famous Chinese litterateur.
Guo Moruo
In the 1950s, Wu Han, then deputy mayor of Beijing and Ming historian, approached Guo Moruo, hoping that he could review his application for excavation of the Ming Tombs. Report.
Guo Moruo did not refuse this request. After all, there should be many priceless and precious cultural relics in the Ming Tombs. However, he did not pay too much attention to the review of this report. After only making simple modifications, he jointly submitted it to the central government with Shen Yanbing, Fan Wenlan and others.
In fact, this application for excavation report has very legitimate and sufficient reasons. After all, if Changling among the Thirteen Tombs of the Ming Dynasty can be excavated, our research on the history of the Ming Dynasty will be There will also be a great degree of breakthrough. After all, among the Thirteen Tombs, Changling, where Zhu Di is buried, is the largest.
Layout of the Ming Tombs
However, when the domestic archaeological community and cultural relic experts learned of the news, they expressed opposition. What's more, they went to Guo Ruomo in person, hoping that he could withdraw the application. But at this moment, Guo Ruomo didn't care about the sounds from the outside world.
Just a few days after the application was submitted, the Central District issued a "principle agreement" approval. After obtaining permission, the work of excavation of Changling officially began. Experts who had previously opposed this decision were forced to participate in the excavation of cultural relics, although they were unwilling to do so.
Everyone knows that winter in the north is very cold, not to mention the mountainous areas in the outer suburbs of Beijing. From Guo Moruo's point of view, he hoped that the excavation work of Changling could be completed as soon as possible, so he repeatedly urged the archaeological team to do their work, and even asked them to explore overnight. Under such high-intensity pressure, Zhao Qichang, who led the team, not only found no cultural relics, but also suffered physical problems.
Snow Scenery of the Ming Tombs
After Zhao Qichang returned to Beijing to recuperate and recovered, he reported to the organization about the Ming Tombs. Faced with the difficulty of developing the Changling Tomb, everyone unanimously decided to develop a smaller imperial tomb next to it to accumulate experience for future excavations of the Changling Tomb.
The tomb of Ming Renzong was selected by the archaeological team at this time. However, to everyone's surprise, after half a month of excavation, everyone still could not find the entrance to the underground palace of Ming Renzong's tomb, so they could only Give up.
Afterwards, everyone accidentally discovered signs of collapse in the tomb of Emperor Wanli. At this time, the archaeological team decided to excavate the tomb of Emperor Wanli. After this, the archaeological team* ** More than 3,000 cultural relics were unearthed.
Dingling Tomb Chamber
However, due to the inexperience of the archaeological team at this time, about 80% of the cultural relics were severely damaged. Among them, the most valuable golden nanmu coffin was burned as firewood by nearby residents.
After the central government learned of the news, it expressed great dissatisfaction with the excavation of the imperial tombs, and therefore issued a policy prohibiting active excavation of the imperial tombs. From then on, no matter how many people applied to excavate the imperial tomb, the central region never agreed.
With this experience and lesson, our country’s archaeological work has a protective and rescue excavation policy for ancient tombs. Only tombs found robbed by tomb thieves or accidentally discovered due to production activities Only when the time comes can we be able to excavate it instead of taking the initiative to excavate it.