In 1368, Zhu Yuanzhang,4 leader of the most powerful rebel army in peasant uprisings against the Yuan Dynasty, topped the Mongol regime and made himself Emperor Tai Zu of the Ming. In his opinion, the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) ushered in the rebirth of China's ethnic Han majority group who had been ruled for nearly a century by the Mongols, an ethnic minority group.
The new emperor was, therefore, resolved to carry forward the feudal traditions initiated by Confucius and developed by the Han rulers of the dynasties before the Ming. And to this end, he spared no effort to promote Confucianism and restore those ceremonial forms that characterized the patriarchal system. Shortly after it came into being, the Ming Dynasty promulgated a set of stringent rules concerning funerals for officials of different rankings, banned cremation and water burials, and made practice by Han people of the Mongol burial customs a crime punishable under the Imperial Criminal Code.
Zhu Yuangzhang was buried in Nanjing, the "south capital", where he set up the Ming Dynasty. His tomb, known as the Xiaoling Mausoleum of the Ming Dynasty, features a divine boulevard with stone statues at both sides of it, which leads to the Hall of Divine Favor, the venue of sacrificial ceremonies in honor of the dead emperor. Behind the Hall of Divine Favor there stands a pavilion-like watchtower, which shades a large stone tablet dedicated to the dead emperor. The dead emperor is buried behind the watchtower, the part of the tomb on the ground forming a large round earthen mound named as the "Sacred City". The ground plan for the tomb of the Ming Dynasty's founding emperor was to be followed in construction of the tombs for all succeeding emperors of the dynasty.
In 1420, the national capital was officially moved to Beijing on order of the third Ming emperor, Zhu Di. Construction of the Forbidden City, however, began far back in 1407, which was to proceed along with work in search of a place with a geomantic quality good enough for imperial tombs. The site was chosen finally, at Mt. Heavenly Longevity, a chain of rolling hills in Changping on the north outskirts of Beijing that encircles a vast expanse of flatland -- a basin, in fact -- on three
sides. Zhu Di, or Emperor Yong Le as he chose to title himself, had his own tomb built on the north fringe of the basin, facing south at the foot of Mt. Heavenly Longevity. The 12 emperors that followed him had their tombs built on the east fringe of the basin or the west, supposedly to accompany their common ancestor in the heaven. Though independent of one another, the 13 Ming Tombs, as they were collectively referred to, were however built under a general construction plan, have a common gate and share the Divine Boulevard.
The 13 Ming Tombs occupy an area of 40 square kilometers. The gate of on the south end of the Divine Boulevard extending to the north. Looking around, we find ourselves being honored by the "imperial guard of honor" standing on either side -- stone statues of six animals in 12 pairs including lions, camels and elephants and statues of three civil or military officials in six pairs. At the north end of the Divine Boulevard there stands an archway called the "Gate of Divine Favor". Beyond the Gate of Divine Favor there are two marble bridges, and beyond the bridges we find a spoke of roads leading to the different Ming tombs. The Divine Boulevard, from the south end to the north, is more than 3,100 meters long.
Emperor Yong Le's tomb, or the Chang Mausoleum, features most prominently among the imperial tombs. Building of the tomb began in 1409, and took 11 long years to complete. In architectural style and ground plan, it is a reproduction of his father's tomb in Nanjing. The Chang Mausoleum consists of three courtyards. The courtyard in the front, which lies in between the gate of the mausoleum and the Gate of Divine Favor, has a few buildings that were used as warehouses of sacrificial objects. The main structure of the mausoleum, the Hall of Divine Favor, stands majestically in the courtyard in the middle.
The hall, with a nine-bay front, features, among others, a roof as magnificent as the roof of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the most important structure of the Forbidden City. What merits special mention is that the pillars are all of whole nanmu6 tree trunks, and the thickest is 1.7 meters in diameter. Construction of the Hall of Divine Favor in the Chang Mausoleum was undertaken almost simultaneously with construction the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the former meant for use by the emperor after death and the latter, when he was alive.
Both halls are on a three-layer marble platform and their roofs are of the highest status, thus providing a vivid example of how the principle "treating a dead person the same way as when the person is still alive" was followed. But life in the real world, after all, is more important than life in the nether world. That explains why the Hall of Divine Favor is smaller than the Hall of Supreme Harmony, and the platform on which it stands is not as high, and the courtyard in front of the platform is not as large as the courtyard in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony. Behind the Hall of Divine Favor, in the third and the last courtyard,
Emperor Yong Le's body lies in state, in a coffin buried beneath the so-called "Sacred City" with a pavilion-like watchtower in its front.
The Chang Mausoleum has never been opened, but the Ding Mausoleum shared by Emperor Shen Zong and his two queens has, allowing us to see what the underground part of an imperial tomb of the Ming Dynasty looks like. Emperor Shen Zong, who reigned supreme from 1573 to 1619, was the dynasty's 13th emperor, the second from the last. Construction of the Ding Mausoleum began in 1584 and, day after day, more than 30,000 soldiers and workmen toiled for six whole years to complete this underground palace. The construction cost came to a total of six million taels of silver, equivalent to two years' state revenue from the land tax.
The Ding Mausoleum is one of the largest of the 13 Ming Tombs. Unfortunately, most of its structures on the ground have perished, and the earthen mound or "Sacred City" and the watchtower in its front are the only structures that have survived the times. The underground part of the mausoleum lies 27 meters beneath the mound. It is, in fact, an underground palace complex consisting of three main halls and two side halls, which together occupy an area of 1,195 square meters. In between the halls there are passageways with stone doors. The walls are built with stone materials, and the floors, with quality bricks. The three main halls each have a double-leaf stone door.
The doors are 3.3 meters high and 1.7 meters wide, each weighing about four tons. A door plate resembles something like a wedge, the part close to the heel post being 0.32 meters thick and the part at the other end, 0.17 meters, while both ends of the heel post are in the shape of bulbs for reduced friction. Archeologists were able to open the doors without much trouble thanks to their design that allows the gravity to shift onto the heal post. The hall in the rear, 36.1 meters long, 9.1 meters wide and 9.5 meters high, is the largest hall in the underground palace. Emperor Shen Zong's coffin is placed on a platform in the middle of the hall, and the queen's coffins are place at either side of it.
Round the coffins there are large wooden trunks painted in bright red. Large quantities of burial objects-mostly things used by the tomb's occupiers in the real world – were found in the trunks - utensils of gold, silver and jade, porcelain articles, as well as garments of silk and brocade. Here is the dragon robe, the emperor's ceremonial dress, on which 12 twining dragons are embroidered. The queens' dresses feature embroidery of lively children, along with auspicious patterns of pine trees, bamboo plants and plum and peach flowers. The imperial crown is woven with fine, pure gold threads, featuring a dragon with a pearl in its mouth and a phoenix decorated with flowers of precious stones. The two phoenix coronets belonging to the two queens are inlaid with 5,000 pearls and 100 precious stones each. Altogether, more than 3,000 burial objects were
unearthed. Of these, the most valuable are the imperial crown and the phoenix coronets. |
