After Cixi died, the pearl of the night was in her mouth. In the 17th year of the Republic of China (AD 1928), the tomb was stolen by the army under the command of warlord Sun Dianying. After that, he wandered into Song Meiling's hands, was regarded as a shoe ornament, and then disappeared.
1928, Sun Dianying, then commander of the 12th Army of the Sixth Army of the National Revolutionary Army, led an army to blow up Ding Dong Mausoleum and looted the rare treasures in the Mausoleum. The pearl in Cixi's mouth was not spared. It is said that bandits opened Cixi's coffin and saw her face as if she were asleep.
Sun Dianying recalled: "It was because she had a big pearl in her mouth. This bead splits in two, and when it is closed, it gives off green cold light, and its hair can be seen within a hundred steps at night. " Bandits pried Cixi's mouth open with bayonets and stole the night pearl.
In addition to the well-known pearls in Cixi's mouth, the nine pearls on her phoenix crown are also quite famous. According to Li Yingfa's Literature and History, in June 1900, invading troops from Britain, Germany, Russia, France, the United States, Japan, Italy and Austria invaded Beijing, and Empress Dowager Cixi took four luminous pearls from the phoenix crown and gave them to foreigners, begging them to leave Beijing. Li, the eunuch in charge at that time, was not around, so a maid-in-waiting named Wang was sent to Ximen Hotel to be sent by Li Hongzhang.
Sixty-four years later (AD 1964), these four luminous pearls were found in the home of a worker named Wu in Amber Woods. This family, who used to do cleaning, took apart a small dirty and oily pillow for cleaning and found a red cloth bag inside. Uncover the red cloth and cover it with a layer of yellow cloth and oil paper. The oil paper is covered with a layer of thin paper, which is wrapped with four crystal-clear night pearls as big as longan.
According to archaeological research, these are the four night pearls on the phoenix crown of Empress Dowager Cixi, which has been lost for many years. It turned out that this dirty little pillow was given to them by an 80-year-old grandmother Wang before she died. After liberation, Master Wu has been adopting this helpless Grandma Wang and treating her like a mother. 1963 When she died, she gave the little pillow and stopped breathing before telling the secret. This grandma Wang is the maid-in-waiting around Empress Dowager Cixi more than 60 years ago.