China's ancestral tomb, descendants of 16 emperors, 300 years without theft.
Since ancient times, tomb robbing has been repeatedly banned and has never stopped. Since the Spring and Autumn Period, the trend of "thick burial" has prevailed, and it is almost difficult for both nobles and commoners to escape the encroachment of tomb robbers in their tombs and tombs.
However, there is such a "China's most bullish ancestral tomb", its descendants have 16 emperors, and it has not been stolen for more than 300 years, and now the country has to deliberately avoid building high-speed rail, which cost 2 more300 million detours.
This is the ancestral tomb of Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty - the Mausoleum of the Ming Emperor.
Zhu Yuanzhang was born in poverty, and when he was young, he herded cattle for landlords to make a living, and later joined the Red Turban Army, successfully overthrew the Yuan Dynasty and ascended to the throne. In that era of small-scale peasant economy, people had a strong clan concept, and Zhu Yuanzhang was no exception.
He loved his family deeply and regarded it as his life. In ancient times, weddings and funerals were major family events, however, Zhu Yuanzhang's parents and brother and sister-in-law died one after another when he was a teenager, making him young and poor.
With the simplest gift of "being clothed and covered by three feet", he chose the most ordinary farm cemetery and buried his relatives.
Zhu Yuanzhang was born in a poor peasant family, and he once borrowed money from east to west, only buying a coffin for his parents. However, just as he was about to bury his loved ones, it rained heavily and the coffin was washed away.
Zhu Yuanzhang had no choice but to set up a small stone tablet as a cemetery in the place where his father's coffin was originally placed. It wasn't until he was named "King of Wu" that he began to officially renovate his parents' mausoleum.
In the second year of Hongwu, that is, the year when Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne, the first thing he dealt with was this matter, which was his concern for many years.
In order to solve the problem of his parents' mausoleum, he ordered the construction of the middle capital in his hometown. After a year of hard work, in 1375 AD, the central capital city was finally completed, and Zhu Yuanzhang immediately issued an edict to use the remaining building materials to renovate his parents' mausoleum.
This renovation not only repaired the damage of the mausoleum, but also laid the scale and overall pattern of the Ming Emperor's mausoleum. From the outside, the mausoleum is an oval flat top that is five meters above the ground around it, and there is a "Shinto" more than 200 meters long at the north gate of the imperial tomb, and there are 32 pairs of exquisite stone statues arranged on both sides of the Shinto, showing the superb skills and excellent aesthetics of the craftsmen.
These stone statues are the earliest stone carvings in the Ming Dynasty royal mausoleum, and they are first-class in terms of design and carving skills. The southern end of the Shinto road leads directly to the Jinshui Bridge site, there is a huge stone tablet on each side of the southern side of the site, the volume, scale and texture of the two stone tablets are exactly the same, but the one on the left is the imperial tomb tablet, and the right side is the wordless tablet.
On the forehead of the imperial tomb, Zhu Yuanzhang personally wrote the six characters of "The Monument of the Ming Emperor's Tomb" to warn future generations to cherish the hard-won country.
He personally wrote inscriptions about his wandering and conquest career, which became important materials for later generations to study the history of the founding of the Ming Dynasty. The Ming Emperor's Mausoleum lasted four years, and was personally supervised by Zhu Yuanzhang, and has now been basically completed.
The facilities in the mausoleum are perfect, including forest gardens, stone tablets, altars and statues, etc., with a grand scale and majestic buildings, which fully reflect Zhu Yuanzhang's meticulous and thoughtful and attention to the construction of the mausoleum.
In feudal society, both the emperor and the common people paid great attention to "feng shui". After pacifying the world, Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang considered changing the cemetery for his parents, but this idea was quickly stopped by a "royal" feng shui master beside him.
The feng shui master told Zhu Yuanzhang that the cemetery of the Zhu family's parents is guarded by Wolong, and the feng shui is excellent, as long as it is repaired and protected, it can protect the descendants of the Zhu family and consolidate the country of the Ming Dynasty, so it cannot be moved at will.
Zhu Yuanzhang naturally believed in "feng shui", so he built the imperial mausoleum here. The mausoleums of emperors and rich nobles in the past dynasties are inevitably stolen, and even the mausoleum of Emperor Liu Che of the Han Dynasty has been stolen in many places.
In addition to the geographical location of the imperial tomb, no one dares to steal the Ming Emperor's tomb, and there are many reasons why it is relatively well preserved. It is said that after Zhu Yuanzhang ascended the throne, in order to prevent tomb robbers from damaging the mausoleum, he also specially asked a special person to guard it, and his successors also strictly guarded the imperial mausoleum.
Surprisingly, after the Qing army entered the customs, not only did not destroy the imperial tombs of the former Ming Dynasty, but like the rulers of the Ming Dynasty, they sent heavy troops to guard them and prevent tomb robbers from taking advantage of them.
In fact, the Qing emperor did this mainly to encircle the Han Chinese and consolidate the Manchu regime. During the reign of Qianlong, he also specially repaired the mausoleum for Ming Sizong.
Although Qianlong later demolished the golden silk nanmu of Long'en Hall to build a palace for himself, only a small part of the building was used, and the underground palace was undamaged. The exquisite structure of the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum also discouraged many tomb robbers with bad intentions.
The structure of the underground palace of the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum is extremely complex and sophisticated, and even the location of the entrance is very secret. In that year, the archaeological team of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage planned to excavate the long tomb of Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, for academic research.
However, the archaeological team searched for several hours under the scorching sun, but still could not find the exact location of the entrance to the underground palace, so they had to give up.
Despite the expertise of the national archaeological team, they have not yet succeeded in entering the mausoleum, let alone the often fearful tomb robbers. Most of them have family burdens and do not have enough time and energy to find the entrance to the mausoleum.
In addition, there are many folk legends about the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum, and compared with other mausoleums, the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum is equipped with complex secret passages, and there is also a fierce "Tomb Guarding Beast" ......
Legends about the Imperial Tomb also terrified tomb robbers. Compared with the Qing Dynasty Imperial Mausoleum that was destroyed by the Tanglin thief Sun Dianying, the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum can be said to be "lucky". The structure of Qing Dynasty mausoleums was usually simple, with no complicated passages, and as long as tomb robbers could find the entrance, they could easily enter the imperial tomb and steal the funerary goods.
Moreover, the imperial tombs of the Qing Dynasty were generally chosen in sparsely populated suburbs, and the remote environment was more likely to attract tomb robbers.
Blessed by the dragon vein, the achievements are extraordinary, and the emperors of the past dynasties attached great importance to "feng shui", which is by no means groundless. After all, it is under the blessing of the dragon vein of the Zhu Emperor's Mausoleum, which is entrenched in Wolong, that the Ming Dynasty has created many glories after more than 270 years.
Since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, capitalism began to sprout and develop rapidly. In the 16th century, Spain and Portugal conquered the Americas and plundered large quantities of real gold from there.
After the royal nobles of Spain and Portugal got these wealth, the first thing they thought of was to import a large amount of silk, tea and porcelain from ancient China, and the large inflow of ** made the Ming Dynasty's ** reserves ranked first in the world.
The Ming Dynasty's military power was among the best in the world. According to historical records, at the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, the number of troops stationed across the country had reached a staggering two million.
Their military equipment is also very complete, with 1,000 thunderbolt cannons for every 5,000 people in the barracks, and traditional weapons such as knives, swords, bows and crossbows. Although in the last years of the Ming Dynasty, there was a serious financial crisis in the ** organization, which led to a significant reduction in the number of troops, according to the records of Western missionaries to China, even if the entire European army was combined, it may not be comparable to the number of troops in the Ming Dynasty.
During the Ming Dynasty, not only the economy and military reached its peak, but the development of the royal family was also very prosperous. As the bloodline of the royal family, a total of 16 emperors were born before and after, and some of them had an important impact on the development of the Ming Dynasty.
Compared with Zhu Yuanzhang, who overthrew the tyrannical rule, established the Ming Empire, and repaired the imperial tombs to protect the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di's exploits can be said to be better.
Zhu Di, the first emperor in Chinese history to ascend the throne as a vassal king. After he ascended the throne, he strengthened the efforts to reduce the feudal domain and consolidate the rule of the royal family"Yongle prosperous", compiled the "Yongle Canon", and moved the capital to Beijing.
In addition, Zheng He's feat of going to the West was also accomplished under his leadership. These feats of Ming Chengzu Zhu Di made him hailed by later historians as one of the greatest emperors of Chinese feudal society.
From the establishment of the Ming Empire by Zhu Yuanzhang, the Taizu of the Ming Dynasty, to the hanging of the coal mountain after the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty, Sizong Zhu Youzhen, after Li Zicheng broke through Beijing, the Ming Dynasty under the protection of the Zhu Emperor's Mausoleum, after more than 270 years of wind and rain, 16 emperors appeared, and the political, economic and military development reached an incomparable peak in the previous dynasty.
Our country is based on"Ancient civilization"Standing in the world, it has always adhered to the parallel of modernization and the protection of cultural relics and monuments. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, while China was committed to economic development and scientific and technological progress, it also attached great importance to the restoration and protection of cultural relics and historic sites of previous dynasties.
For the development of the country, infrastructure construction is indispensable, including the construction of highways and high-speed railways. However, in order to protect the heritage monuments, the high-speed rail must be detoured.
The original design plan of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway was considered to run through the north side of the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum, but in order to protect this important historical and cultural site, railway design experts decided to avoid the southern side of the Imperial Mausoleum after several revisions and consultations.
At an academic seminar on railway construction and development, Wang Yuze, chief engineer of the Fourth Survey and Design Institute of China Railway and the designer of the Xuzhou-Shanghai section of the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, pointed out the decision.
In order to bypass the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum, ** invested more than 6 kilometers of bridge construction funds, and also spent more than 300 meters of underground tunnel excavation costs, exceeding the initial construction budget of 2300 million yuan.
However, from the perspective of the long historical value of the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum, as well as the protection of cultural relics, the decision to avoid the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum and build a high-speed rail is undoubtedly wise and correct. Such a decision was also unanimously approved by the society in the later period.
Until now, the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum in Fengyang County is still regarded as a key protection object by China's cultural relics protection units, and its restoration and protection work has never been interrupted. All this is to let more people understand the unique historical and cultural value contained in the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum.