The World Travel

Ming Dynasty Tombs is located on Yin San Mountain, northwest suburban of Beijing. This is the place burying 13 emperors, 23 queens, 1 Royal second rank wife and 10 Royal third rank wife. Thirteen royal tombs in luminous yellow color have located between mountains.
The mausoleum architecture falls in line with natural landscape is a typical feature of architecture of mausoleum of China Emperors. This tomb area was added to UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

Ming Hao Tomb, built in Nanjing, is not located in Ming Dynasty Tombs. The one who started building Ming Dynasty Tombs is Ming Cheng Cu Zhou Di, the third king of the Ming Dynasty. He started building a tomb that was the biggest here in 1409 called Chang Ling Tomb for him. The kings of the next generations also built tombs until 1644, all this area is 40 km2 in width with walls surrounded 40 km in length. Each tomb is located on a high knoll and connected with others by a way called "genie street”. The two sides of Genie Street have two rows of statues Camel, Elephant, and Monster of stone to guard. The stone gate leading to the tomb was built in 1540, 14 meters high and 19 meters wide.

Architecture of Chang Ling Tomb was simulated by the structure of Forbidden City. Walls in red, tile in yellow, temples inserting alternately each other have expressed the respective position of Zhou Di and the power of a king. An Dian is the main architecture in Tomb area. All sacrificial activities were held here. The great temple was built by woods, including 60 columns of iron wood 12 meters in height, 1 m in diameter. This kind of wood is rare, solid, and not easy to be decayed, also it has strange scent. The ironwood timber was taken from the deep forest area of Yunnan and Sichuan. Once completed cutting, they must wait for flood season to drop woods drifting downstream. After woods left the forest, they plaited them into rafts to take to Beijing.

Shipping on the road had to wait for winter, for a distance they have to dig a well, collect water to pour onto the ground to make it freeze, then use people to pull to Beijing. It took 3-4 years, used up to 20 thousand people; manpower, material resources, financial resources were extremely expensive. Behind An Dian is a square architecture which is imposingly high called Ming Lou. This is the kind of typical architecture of a kingly tomb in Ming dynasty. Tombstone of the owner is placed inside; under the tombstone is catacomb putting coffin of the Emperor and his Queen. Decades 50 of the previous century, the archeologist made plan to excavate Zhang Daoling Tomb, but never found the entrance.

Later, after investigation and calculation, they decided to conduct a test excavation another tomb in Ming Dynasty Tombs to avoid causing harm to Zhang Daoling. Dao Ling is the third-largest tomb of this tomb area, where buried the Wanli Emperor Zhu Yijun - official name Wan Li and his two Queens. Its form of architecture is very similar to Zhang Daoling, so this is the reason why archeologist chose it to try excavation. At first, people do not find the entrance to the cellar, until they found a small mysterious stone stele fortunately. It was the key of the cellar; position of the door of Dao Ling tomb was carved clearly on the stone stele. Basing on this stele, the archeologists had advantages in coming into this underground palace. Usually, the door to the cellar is completely secret, why are there a map here? The reason is Wan Li King started building Dao Ling when he was 22 years old, it took 6 years to complete, it means he was 28-year-old then. However, the king deceased at the age of 58. Therefore, this tomb was a secret room during the 30 years, so to prevent forgetting the entrance, people had to make a map to direct the door. After interring the king, people did not cancel it for unknown reason.

Dao Ling Tomb deepened into the ground 27 meters, including 5 large temples: Front, between, back and two sides – left and right; the whole was constructed of stone. In the between temple, there are three thrones made of Han White Jade, a big jar containing perfume was put in front, known as Zhang Ming Deng. The back temple is a crucial part of the tomb; it contains clothes of Wan Li King and his two queens. Dao Ling Tomb has more than 3,000 cultural objects such as embroidery, costumes and jewelry. In addition, there are a lot of rare objects made of gold, jade, porcelain.

(Source: Can Tho Newspaper)