Burial of the dead is always an interesting cultural experience. There seems to be a commonality in the ancient world where hubris meets mortality. In building the great pyramids, it is said that the engineers and key officials who knew the design and therefore the route to the sarcophagus were killed when each burial pyramid was sealed. The burial chambers were filled with everything the pharaoh would need for a resurrected afterlife journey. The same was true in China during the Ming Dynasty.
The Ming Tombs are the eastern equivalent of the Valley of the Kings. Generations of Tombs are arranged in proxity to the main site. The actual tombs are not elaborate stone structures, but appear as large earth hills preceded by a complex of buildings.
The largest of these buildings now hosts a few of the artifacts from the tomb.
During the Ming Dynasty, size mattered. If you were physically large, then you must be prosperous. This Emperor must have been huge. Below is a picture his jade belt. Only the jade pieces remain, as the fabric has disintegrated. Even rapped twice around the waist, imagine the shear girth. Very prosperous indeed...
Many Chinese still practice veneration or ancestor worship. So it is not uncommon to see piles of money at the foot of a statue. The real Ming Dynasty emperor buried in the hill behind would not have been over sixteen feet tall, but one definitely receives the impression that in life he was a dominant presence.
Leaving the artifacts gallery and heading straight back towards the hill is a gate, that is very important to visitors, and the grave marker. The gate is so important because it is believed that after visiting the dead one must be careful to maintain the presence of a personal soul. So, the tradition goes that on your way out you must walk through the gate and say, "I'm back" in Chinese. Otherwise your soul will be left behind at the burial ground. Another very interesting point is that there is an obvious threshold to the gate and practically any period building maintains a similar trip hazard. It turns out, that is exactly by design. Local ancient belief was that spirits do travel the earth, with both good and bad seeking to complete their tasks. However, as a means of transportation, spirits move along the ground but cannot jump. So, to keep a spirit out of your house or yard simply build a threshold high enough that it can't jump over. Or in this case, build a threshold high enough to keep them in when you jump out.
Behind the gate is a multi-story building housing the grave marker. This arrangement confused archeologists for a while. Searching structurally, there did not appear to be any passageway underneath the marker or the building leading to the gravesite. Finally, it took a linguist to solve the riddle. What the gravestone truly said was, "Behind this marker lies the Emperor" not "Underneath". The site had literally been in front of them the entire time and was simply covered with trees.
Part of veneration is the requested respect of tourists not to take pictures, even of the hill that dwarfs the marker building. Archeologists have basically found a similar cache to an Egyptian Pharaoh. Everything needed for the afterlife was buried with the emperor: clothes, gold & silver ingots, crowns, food, concubines, members of court... That's right, his favorite and most trusted people were buried alive in chambers on the site. Can you image the human posturing that goes on after the emperor's death? "No, no really, he liked me but I wasn't his favorite. Honest. I thought you were? Right?"
(On to the Great Wall)
Even if you go to the most heavily touristed location, as we did, this is a worthwhile venture. The good thing was that the weather was bitterly cold, so most tourists stayed within a few hundred yards of the main starting point. After the practically government imposed "group shot", the guide pointed us in the direction of the steeper left branch.
This route was truly "steeper". We marveled at how difficult construction must have been because we were simply, or not so simply, walking up a sometimes greater than 45 degree grade, not building it.
The climb was absolutely worth the effort. In twenty minutes we were relatively free of tourist and enjoying the views. The only down side is that this leaves you totally exposed to the wandering and incredibly persistent vendors. If you go to the wall make sure to bring your sense of humor or else these folks, trying to scrape a capitalist living together, will probably drive you a little nuts.
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