2002-12-09 - 11:04 p.m.

The Ming Tombs

Beijing, Nov. 16

Continuing the story of our trip to China

Today we were scheduled to meet our guide Vivian in the lobby even earlier than the day before, 8 a.m. sharp. Once again, this was not the hassle that it would ordinarily be since I was still finding myself waking up at 5 or 6 a.m.

Today we were scheduled to see just two sights, but they were major - the tombs of the Ming emperors and the Great Wall itself. Both these of these attractions were not in Beijing proper, but an hour's drive from the city center.

Of course before we went to the Ming Tombs, we had to go to a CITS Dollar Trap. This time it was a jade factory.

Just like with the pearl factory we got a little lecture on jade by a Chinese girl with a singsongy accent. Even after this I'm still not clear exactly what jade is. Is it a type of quartz? Anyway I know that it comes out of the ground, and it's only found in this part of the world. It's usually green, but it can be other colors, even white. It's also very hard, like an 8.5 on the hardness scale.

The Chinese have all sorts of beliefs about jade. If you're a woman, wearing a jade bracelet on your left wrist promotes health. A Chinese emperor thought that jade would keep his body from decaying, so he was buried in a head-to-toe suit of jade tiles. Jade seems to be naturally cold, so people in the summer rest their heads on jade pillows to cool themselves off.

We were shown some people wearing working with stone chipping machinery, working at creating jade objets d'art. I felt sorry for them because it was colder than ass in there.

There was something I was looking for there, a pair of jade Chinese Lions and Lily was looking for a nice jade bracelet. Both of us found what we were looking for and we got them for a good price, with a little help from Vivian. Lily was also perfecting her bargaining technique - starting the negotiations in English, then switching to Chinese when things get serious.

The Ming tombs seemed to be out in the middle of nowhere, about 30 miles north of Beijing in a valley surrounded by farms and fields. The long, narrow road to the tombs featured a lot of roadside fruit stands.

The Ming emperors were the second to last dynasty to rule China, starting in 1368 and being overthrown in 1644. The Mings built the Temple of Heaven and the Forbidden City. All but one or two of the Ming Emperors were buried in the tombs.

Apparently the Mings were very much into ancestor worship, and treating the dead as if they were still alive - many of the tombs were designed to look like regular imperial palaces.

The place where we spent the most time was at the tomb of Wanli who ruled 1573-1620. If you could use only two adjectives to describe Wanli they would be "corrupt" and "extravagant." He ruled 47 years, but his mismanagement was directly responsible for the collapse of the dynasty. When the Mings were overthrown their tombs were looted, somehow Wanli's tomb escaped the bandits. When it was opened at the end of the 1950s it was a major archeological find with a wealth of splendid clothes and jewelry.

So, basically he was sucky emperor with a swell tomb. Isn't that how it always goes?

The actual burial chamber was deep inside a mound, and we had to take several flights of stairs down into the heart of the tomb. I'm sure everyone was thinking the same thing I was: climbing all these stairs to get out is going to be no fun.

Most of the valuable stuff has been taken out of the vaults, but the heavy things like thrones and stone sarcophagi are still down there. As we approached the throne it looked like there were colorful flowers scattered all over it and around it. As I got closer, to my astonishment I discovered that they weren't flowers at all but wadded up Chinese money. In fact, there were piles of money on or around most of the imperial possessions. Ancestor worship in action!

This seemed crazy to me for two reasons. First, the emperors were DEAD. Money isn't much use to them. Secondly, when they were alive they had all the money anyway! Coals to Newcastle, and all that. Well, people are always tossing money into every fountain they see, so I guess this is like that. According to Vivian every so often then clean the money up and it goes toward upkeep of the tomb.

There were a couple of ingenious little tricks in the tomb, like them rigging up a deadbolt on the inside of the door that could be tripped from the outside. There was also a huge urn full of oil that was supposed to burn for a thousand years, but of course once the air in the tomb was used up, it went out. Well, nobody's perfect!

In a building above ground they had some of the things they'd found in Wanli's tomb. Reading one of the plaques, it took me a while to figure out that Wanli's second wife died before his first. Those polygamous Chinese emperors! Also by looking at Wanli's skeleton they were able to determine that he was a hunchback. Hard to keep a secret from the forensic people these days, although apparently Wanli was also very fat, too - something contemporary historians were quick to point out.

After the Ming Tombs, it was lunch time, and we went to another tourist restaurant, one that was attached to something called a "Friendship Store." Basically it's a big bazaar full of touristy stuff, run by the Chinese government. Supposedly goods is cheaper there, but from what I saw things were generally more expensive than on the street.

One thing I was glad to see there was a selection of packs to replace my Chinese piece-o-crap pack that fell apart at the train station. I bought a Jansport (an American brand, ahem) that was expensive in Chinese terms, but cheap in American terms. Great! That's one more thing I can cross off my list.

There was also a little display of T-shirts and we each bought one, and a funny guy wrote our names on them in Chinese. Lilly has a perfectly good Chinese name, but we had to make something up for me. Thank heaven they had some 2XL shirts because a Chinese XL would have been too small for us.

They were also selling some replicas of the famous Terracotta Warriors of Xi'an that we were going to be seeing in a couple days. I was quite startled by the fact that the replicas were LIFE SIZE and the $1000 purchase price included free shipping to anywhere in the world. It definitely was a cool thing, but where would we put it? Lily commented it would be creepy, like living with another person. Maybe we could put it in the back yard! Oh, that's right, we don't have a back yard. Forget it then.

With this little shopping junket finished, we continued on to the Great Wall.

Continued