China, Day 5, Part 1: Ming Tombs
Jul. 30th, 2006 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellarienOn Wednesday I woke up to the sound of a bird call I'd never heard before; a mellow, contralto phrase several times repeated, that it wasn't hard to hear as 'Happy Birthday'.
After breakfast I got on the bus (one of three; it was a popular option) for the tour to the Ming tombs and the Great Wall.
Our guide was very informative; here are some of the snippets of info that stuck in my memory from her spiel on the longish drive to the tombs north-west of the city.
The English name 'China', according to our guide, came from foreign traders' misunderstanding of directions to a southern town with good porcelain.
The Communist takeover is referred to as the 'Founding of the new country.'
The local perception is that Beijing is more oriented to politics and culture, Shanghai to money.
Beijing has good Feng Shui.
The first Ming Emperor passed the kingdom to his grandson because his first son died, but a younger son later defeated and killed his nephew and took over the kingdom, and his power base was in Beijing, so he moved the capital there from Nanjing.
Old Beijing had different gates for different purposes -- one for bringing in special mountain water for the emperor, one for removing night soil, one for bringing in rice from the south, one for soldiers going north to the wall. (Gate of Triumph')
License plates are color coded; ordinary private cars blue, military/police white (they get special dispensation to flout traffic laws; I'm not quite as sure as our guide that this is a unique feature of communist countries), black for diplomatic, yellow for buses and large trucks.
The tombs of the Ming emperors (1368-1644) are set in a pleasant, orchard-filled valley outside Beijing. It was peach season, and the road was lined with stalls where the local farmers offered their produce. Big, golden-bodied, double-winged dragonflies were everywhere.
We visited Dingling, the 'Durability Tomb' of Shenzong, the 13th Emperor. The tomb was excavated in the early 50's; the archaelogists dug tunnels, and eventually found a marker giving tomb co-ordinates, believed to have been left by the builders for their own reference, as the tomb was completed half a century before it was needed. (The still-young emperor held a party down there when it was finished.) The Soul Tower, with the Emperor's marble stela, has been restored since then, but many of the minor buildings on the site fell victim to various wars going through the area. The architecture has many details very much like those in the Forbidden City, with the marble posts, the roof-corner figures, and the marble meridian path -- though this one was strictly for the dead Emperor.
The parking lot outside, and the courtyard in front of the tomb itself, had souvenir stalls offering colourful parasols as well as the other usual souvenirs. There were also some rather cute stone picnic benches in the shape of elephants, but I didn't get a picture of those, because they were all occupied.
After climbing a path up the tomb mound, we went through a security check and then down a 1950's staircase to the Underground Palace, a complex of marble-lined, barrel-vaulted chambers with vast jade or marble gates made exactly like the gold-studded wooden ones in the Forbidden City. The Emperor's coffin, as well as those of both his empress and the concubine who bore his heir and was posthumously made Dowager Empress, were found in one chamber. In theory, they should have had a chamber each, but it's believed that wet conditions the year of the burial prevented the use of the main entrance, and having got the coffins in the workmen couldn't get them through the narrow interior passages. The doors were locked when workers left using a small monolith that was allowed to slide down behind the doors, jamming them shut. The ingenious archaelogists worked out a way to remove them with loops of wire poked through the narrow attribute.
According to our guide, the coffins and chests on display now are modern mock-ups, the originals having been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution in the 1970's; oddly enough, none of the web guides mentions that detail. Many of the silks and other perishables found in the tomb fell to dust soon after being exposed to the air, which is one reason why the other tombs haven't been opened. Some things seem to have survived, and are on display in a small museum on the site. After passing through the front chamber, where marble thrones and a few other items are still on display (and I've no idea if that vase is real or not) we climbed the stairs on the other side, and passed under the Soul Tower and by the marble stela, still stained pinkish after being painted red by the Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution, and then had a quick look around the little museum.
(To be continued)
After breakfast I got on the bus (one of three; it was a popular option) for the tour to the Ming tombs and the Great Wall.
Our guide was very informative; here are some of the snippets of info that stuck in my memory from her spiel on the longish drive to the tombs north-west of the city.
The English name 'China', according to our guide, came from foreign traders' misunderstanding of directions to a southern town with good porcelain.
The Communist takeover is referred to as the 'Founding of the new country.'
The local perception is that Beijing is more oriented to politics and culture, Shanghai to money.
Beijing has good Feng Shui.
The first Ming Emperor passed the kingdom to his grandson because his first son died, but a younger son later defeated and killed his nephew and took over the kingdom, and his power base was in Beijing, so he moved the capital there from Nanjing.
Old Beijing had different gates for different purposes -- one for bringing in special mountain water for the emperor, one for removing night soil, one for bringing in rice from the south, one for soldiers going north to the wall. (Gate of Triumph')
License plates are color coded; ordinary private cars blue, military/police white (they get special dispensation to flout traffic laws; I'm not quite as sure as our guide that this is a unique feature of communist countries), black for diplomatic, yellow for buses and large trucks.
The tombs of the Ming emperors (1368-1644) are set in a pleasant, orchard-filled valley outside Beijing. It was peach season, and the road was lined with stalls where the local farmers offered their produce. Big, golden-bodied, double-winged dragonflies were everywhere.
We visited Dingling, the 'Durability Tomb' of Shenzong, the 13th Emperor. The tomb was excavated in the early 50's; the archaelogists dug tunnels, and eventually found a marker giving tomb co-ordinates, believed to have been left by the builders for their own reference, as the tomb was completed half a century before it was needed. (The still-young emperor held a party down there when it was finished.) The Soul Tower, with the Emperor's marble stela, has been restored since then, but many of the minor buildings on the site fell victim to various wars going through the area. The architecture has many details very much like those in the Forbidden City, with the marble posts, the roof-corner figures, and the marble meridian path -- though this one was strictly for the dead Emperor.
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The parking lot outside, and the courtyard in front of the tomb itself, had souvenir stalls offering colourful parasols as well as the other usual souvenirs. There were also some rather cute stone picnic benches in the shape of elephants, but I didn't get a picture of those, because they were all occupied.
 |
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After climbing a path up the tomb mound, we went through a security check and then down a 1950's staircase to the Underground Palace, a complex of marble-lined, barrel-vaulted chambers with vast jade or marble gates made exactly like the gold-studded wooden ones in the Forbidden City. The Emperor's coffin, as well as those of both his empress and the concubine who bore his heir and was posthumously made Dowager Empress, were found in one chamber. In theory, they should have had a chamber each, but it's believed that wet conditions the year of the burial prevented the use of the main entrance, and having got the coffins in the workmen couldn't get them through the narrow interior passages. The doors were locked when workers left using a small monolith that was allowed to slide down behind the doors, jamming them shut. The ingenious archaelogists worked out a way to remove them with loops of wire poked through the narrow attribute.
According to our guide, the coffins and chests on display now are modern mock-ups, the originals having been destroyed in the Cultural Revolution in the 1970's; oddly enough, none of the web guides mentions that detail. Many of the silks and other perishables found in the tomb fell to dust soon after being exposed to the air, which is one reason why the other tombs haven't been opened. Some things seem to have survived, and are on display in a small museum on the site. After passing through the front chamber, where marble thrones and a few other items are still on display (and I've no idea if that vase is real or not) we climbed the stairs on the other side, and passed under the Soul Tower and by the marble stela, still stained pinkish after being painted red by the Red Guards in the Cultural Revolution, and then had a quick look around the little museum.
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(To be continued)