However, a woman carved a beautiful stone carving in front of her grave with the skill of the dragon below and the phoenix above.
This woman is the Empress Dowager Cixi who controlled the political situation in the late Qing Dynasty for half a century.
Moreover, after her death, she carved a phoenix on the dragon, which I think is not only a representative of women's rights.
The mausoleum of Cixi is the most interesting landscape in the Qing tombs.
The red-walled and yellow-tiled cornices of Ming-style buildings, facing south across a manger ditch from Ci 'an Mausoleum, are exactly the same in scale and style, but different in interior decoration and detail design.
The historical records and legends about Jianling have combined into an amazing "feminist" story.
After the death of Emperor Xianfeng, Zai Chun, the son of Cixi, succeeded to the throne. Behind the six-year-old Tongzhi emperor, Ci 'an and Cixi also listened to politics as Empress Dowager Cixi and Empress Dowager Cixi respectively.
In the five years of Tongzhi, the two Empresses chose Putuo Valley and Puxiang Valley, the treasure trove of Dongling, to build tombs. Because there is no precedent for two queens to build a mausoleum together in the history of more than 200 years in the Qing Dynasty, how to build a mausoleum has become a difficult task with no rules to follow. After Minister Cheng Xiu proposed that one mausoleum be buried together (coffins are side by side, regardless of height), or officials from one mausoleum and two tombs were denied by Cixi, two tombs were finally built.
The two tombs were started in August of the 12th year of Tongzhi (1873) and completed at the same time 1879. The consumption of silver exceeded two million and two thousand, which was superior among all the tombs of the Empress, but Cixi was not satisfied.
After Ci 'an's death, the Western Empress Dowager monopolized the power and was the only one. 1895, she took advantage of the seepage of the mausoleum and ordered the demolition and reconstruction of the three halls. The whole project lasted 13 years and cost a lot.
As the mausoleum system has been fixed, Lafayette can't find a new way in the scale and style of the mausoleum, so he can only make a fuss about the interior decoration and architectural details, making the rebuilt Cixi mausoleum the most luxurious and unique royal mausoleum in the Qing Dynasty.
The mausoleum of Cixi can be called gold, wood and stone.
According to the records of the Qing Dynasty, more than 4,592 Zijin Ye were used in the three halls alone.
There are more than 2,400 golden dragons painted inside and outside the three halls. The 64 pillars of the three halls are all wrapped in semi-solid bronze gilded dragon patterns, and the five bats on the inner wall of the three halls are carved with flowers and plants, and they have all been screened in red and gold. Although the real glory has been greedily plundered by grave robbers, the luxurious remnants and fragments of the "Golden Unique" can still be seen today.
As for the unique wood, it is enough to make people pay attention to it. The beams of the three halls are all made of top-grade Huang Huali wood. It is said that this kind of wood with hard wood and delicate texture is now on the verge of extinction, and its price is even more valuable. Cixi's coffin is made of extremely precious gold nanmu.
The most noteworthy is the stone tablet of Xiangling Mausoleum of Cixi.
Not only the stone materials are all made of high-quality white marble, but also the stone carving pattern is absolutely unique: the railings of the white marble fence around the Long 'en Hall are all carved into the pattern of "Phoenix" flying forward and "Dragon" chasing after; The stigma of 76 watchtowers is engraved with elephant peaks. Below the phoenix are two dragons carved on the column and outside. This unique style of "one phoenix suppresses two dragons" from the royal family echoes the pattern of dragons chasing the phoenix on the stone fence, which jointly strengthens and publicizes the gender implication of imperial power; The dragon and phoenix in front of the temple and the carving on the pen stone are even more precious stone carvings.
Its composition breaks the traditional pattern of dragon and phoenix standing side by side, showing a novel and unique pattern of being superior to phoenix and being inferior to dragon. In addition, the high relief, the lifelike three-dimensional sense created by sculpture and the momentum of dancing with dragons point the gender emphasis of the supreme imperial power to the extreme.
It can be seen that both gold, wood and stone are just the creation of absolute power.
In fact, there are many works like this, such as this ebony series in Ebony Garden, which is a typical phoenix with dragons on the top and dragons on the bottom.
The whole thing was carved by the sculptor with hundreds of years of ebony. The posture of the phoenix is lifelike, and so is the dragon below.
The "Three Wonders" of Cixi Mausoleum is an extremely luxurious "feminist" story.
The word "right" naturally contains not the female "right" in the sense of feminist revolution, but the highest "power" of feudal rule.
As early as the late Qing Dynasty, a woman named He Zhen denied the same concept of women and examined women's social gender in class theory. In her view, gender equality is not simply that men do not suppress women's gender equality, but that all people in society and class are equal.
Queen Victoria of Britain, Lv Zhi of China, Empress Wu Zetian and Cixi are all female-dominated regimes, but they have not fundamentally changed the unequal society between men and women, which shows that a few women hold power and a few men hold power is very different and cannot bring real equality between men and women. Therefore, we must first overthrow the "rule of man", eliminate classes, and "make the world without women and men."
In this way, whether the phoenix is in front, the dragon is behind, or behind, it is not what we usually call a "feminist" symbol.