After the death of Emperor Guangxu, Cixi established Puyi as the new emperor, and she herself was promoted as the Empress Dowager. But on the same day that Cixi became Empress Dowager Cixi, the woman who had been in power for several years also drove Hexi. Interestingly, however, Cixi's last words did not care about her and entrust her to the country when her life was dying, but set a rule that "women should not go into politics again". Compared with those years when Cixi was in power, her last words were really embarrassing.
After the death of Cixi, she was buried in the Qing Dongling with extremely high specifications. Like Cixi's style of spending money before her death, her funeral was extremely luxurious, not to mention the specifications of Empress Dowager Cixi's burial. It was only a funerary object, which also contained countless treasures. Cixi's daily life before her death was extremely luxurious, and there were countless jewels, antiques and jade articles. The part of these objects that Cixi loved very much became her funerary objects.
According to the memoirs of Li, the personal eunuch of Empress Dowager Cixi, we can know that the silk mattress that Cixi covered in the coffin was made of gold wire; The rockhopper on her head is inlaid with half a catty of bloodstone; The three beads hanging around the neck are round and moist, which is a rare treasure; And in order to fill the gap in Cixi's coffin, eunuchs filled more than 2,000 pearls in one fell swoop. ...
Cixi's funerary objects are numerous, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs has specially made a booklet for this purpose and put it on record. Among these funerary objects, the most precious thing is not ordinary things like gold, silver and jade, but the night pearl contained in Cixi's mouth! China doesn't produce such things as the night pearl, so the night pearl mainly relies on tributes from other countries. According to later scholars' research, the night pearl mentioned in our article was plundered from the Mughal dynasty by an Afghan king who conquered India eight times, and its material was diamonds.
After the King of Afghanistan got this pearl, he specially presented it to the Qing Dynasty as a gesture of restoration and protection. Since then, this rare night pearl in the world has been preserved in the inner museum of the Qing Dynasty. It is said that this luminous pearl weighs 422 yuan and 7 cents (about today's 133 grams), and its estimated value is10.08 billion vehicles (about 800 million yuan today).
The mausoleum of Empress Dowager Cixi is so luxurious that many people naturally covet it. So, 1928, Sun Dianying used military exercises as an excuse to open the cemeteries of Empress Dowager Cixi and Qianlong with big shells and looted them. Later, according to Sun Dianying's own memory, when the coffin was opened, the body of Empress Dowager Cixi did not rot, and even preserved the luster and softness of her skin before her death.
But when the pearl in her mouth was taken out, Empress Dowager Cixi's body lost its elasticity instantly, became stiff and dehydrated, and her skin seemed to dry overnight.
This night pearl is divided into two parts. If taken separately, it won't emit any light, just a transparent crystal. But once they are combined into a ball, they will emit soft green light, which can be seen clearly within a hundred steps. It can be said that the warlord Sun Dianying made a fortune with the funerary objects of Cixi and Qianlong. However, the good times did not last long. His behavior was denounced by many people, especially the children of the Eight Banners and the son of Emperor Puyi, who demanded that the National Government severely punish Sun Dianying.
But even if all walks of life made their positions clear, Sun Dianying was not severely punished in the end. It turns out that when Sun Dianying got wind of it for the first time, he took out a large part of the treasures from grave robbery, including this night pearl. Later, the night pearl spread to Song Meiling. It is said that Song Meiling inlaid two parts of the night pearl on the left and right uppers of a pair of shoes. Later, Song Meiling made several speeches in the United States to raise funds for the domestic war of resistance. And those shoes inlaid with night pearls were also sold by Song Meiling to Rockefeller, a wealthy American businessman, who promised to provide funds for China.
Summary:
Today, this rare night pearl in the world is still collected at home by Rockefeller's descendants. Because Rockefeller bought this pearl through proper means at that time, his descendants refused to return it or sell it to China at the same price. So this national treasure has been wandering outside.