On October 22nd, the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu reign, a woman who ruled the politics of Qing Dynasty for forty-eight years left this world of domestic troubles and foreign invasion at the age of seventy-four. She is the Empress Dowager Cixi, who has all the power in the world and is my exclusive. Cixi, the uncrowned king in China's modern history, ended three times and decided the heir to the throne twice, playing with the mountains and rivers of the Qing Dynasty.
Cixi had a prominent political authority before her death, and enjoyed all the wealth in the world all her life. The mausoleum she built for herself was extremely luxurious. The mausoleum of Cixi is the most interesting landscape in the Qing tombs. The red-walled and yellow-tiled cornices of Ming-style buildings, facing south across a manger ditch from Ci 'an Mausoleum, are exactly the same in scale and style, but different in interior decoration and detail design. The historical records and legends about Jianling have combined into an amazing "feminist" story. Cixi Mausoleum is located in Dongling of Qing Dynasty, east of Dingling of Xianfeng Emperor.
After the death of Emperor Xianfeng, Zai Chun, the son of Cixi, succeeded to the throne. Behind the six-year-old Tongzhi emperor, Ci 'an and Cixi also listened to politics as Empress Dowager Cixi and Empress Dowager Cixi respectively. In the five years of Tongzhi, the two Empresses chose Putuo Valley and Puxiang Valley, the treasure trove of Dongling, to build tombs. Because there is no precedent for two queens to build a mausoleum together in the history of more than 200 years in the Qing Dynasty, how to build a mausoleum has become a difficult task with no rules to follow. After Minister Cheng Xiu proposed that one mausoleum be buried together (coffins are side by side, regardless of height), or officials from one mausoleum and two tombs were denied by Cixi, two tombs were finally built. The construction of these two mausoleums began in August of the 12th year of Tongzhi (1873) and was completed at the same time in 1879. There is Ci 'an Mausoleum in the west and Ci 'xi Mausoleum in the east. The two mausoleums are roughly the same size, but Ci 'an Mausoleum used 2.6 million taels of silver and Cixi only used 2.27 million taels. At that time, although the empress dowager was in power together. But Ci 'an's position is higher than Cixi's. Cixi is a competitive woman and can't fall behind others. In fact, it is superior among all the queen's tombs, but Cixi is not satisfied with it. After Ci 'an's death, the Western Empress Dowager monopolized the power and was exclusive to me. 1895, she took advantage of the seepage of her mausoleum and ordered the demolition and reconstruction of the three halls. The whole project lasted 13 years, and it cost a lot until Cixi died. Although the mausoleum system has been established, Lafayette has not only found a new way in the scale and style of the mausoleum, but also made great efforts to make a fuss about the interior decoration and architectural details, making the rebuilt Cixi mausoleum the most luxurious and unique royal mausoleum in the Qing Dynasty.
The rebuilt Cixi Mausoleum, with exquisite materials, exquisite workmanship and unique decoration, is the "three wonders" of Ciling.
Necessary, exquisite materials. When you step into the Long 'en Gate of Cixi's Mausoleum, you can see the unique reddish-brown doors and windows, linghua and beam arch at a glance, which are integrated, giving people a sense of purity and pleasing to the eye. At first glance, it is not as gorgeous as the red lacquer beams and columns that are common in the court. Careful observation shows that wood grain is delicate and elegant in color. This is a precious wood from Huang Huali, mainly produced in Hainan Island. Visiting buildings all over the country, the only temple built with this kind of wood is the mausoleum of Cixi. Among the 64 pillars of the Three Great Halls, except for the 7-meter-high gold pillar and the middle pillar of Long 'en Hall, which is a box, the rest are single straight logs with a diameter of 1 meter and a height of 3.65 meters. These precious materials constitute one of the exquisite Woods of Cixi Mausoleum. According to the records of the Qing Dynasty, more than 4,592 Zijin Ye were used in the three halls alone. Although this real splendor has been greedily plundered by grave robbers, the luxury remnants and fragments of the "Golden Unique" can still be seen today. As for the unique wood, it is enough to make people pay attention to it. The beams of the three halls are all made of top-grade Huang Huali wood. It is said that this kind of wood with hard wood and delicate texture is now on the verge of extinction, and its price is even more valuable. Cixi's coffin is made of extremely precious gold nanmu.
Two unique skills, exquisite craftsmanship. The three halls of Cixi Mausoleum are all decorated with colorful paintings, all of which are gilded. The 64 pillars of the Three Halls are all inlaid with gold, which is more magnificent than the six gold pillars of the Taihe Hall in the Forbidden City in Beijing. There are 30 brick walls with an area of 228 square meters inside and outside the three halls, which are engraved with the words "Five Blessingg Shoushou", "Ling Dai Panleng" and "All flowers are impenetrable" respectively, and the bricks are painted with red gold powder to make them look more brilliant. The luxury and beauty of gold ornaments is a must.
Three unique, unique decoration. In order to show that women are in power, the stone railings around the Long 'en Hall are engraved with the pattern of "Phoenix attracting dragons". Yi Long Phoenix in front of the temple was carved on a stone bench with a length of 3. 18m and a width of1.6m. The phoenix spread its wings in the air and reclined in the clouds. The dragon came out of the water, bent down and held his head high. Phoenix attracts dragons to play with fire beads. On the 69 white marble railings around the Long 'en Hall, the pattern of "Phoenix attracting dragons" was also carefully carved. In particular, the 76 sentries between the railings are the most unconventional. Among the stone fence posts built by the royal family, the "Dragon and Phoenix posts" have the highest level, and most of them are arranged alternately with one dragon and one phoenix. The platform whistle of Cixi Mausoleum is even more unusual. It's like carving a phoenix in Yun Xiang, with a smug face. This group, a pair of patterns of "Phoenix attracting dragon". The whole carving column * * * carved 240 phoenixes and 308 dragons, which means that carving is rare in the world. How can you not call it a must! This unique style of "one phoenix suppresses two dragons" from the royal family echoes the pattern of dragons chasing the phoenix on the stone fence, which jointly strengthens and publicizes the gender implication of imperial power; The dragon and phoenix in front of the temple and the carving on the pen stone are even more precious stone carvings. Its composition breaks the traditional pattern of dragon and phoenix standing side by side, showing a novel and unique pattern of being superior to phoenix and being inferior to dragon. In addition, the high relief, the lifelike three-dimensional sense created by sculpture and the momentum of dancing with dragons point the gender emphasis of the supreme imperial power to the extreme.
The "Three Wonders" of Cixi Mausoleum is an extremely luxurious "feminist" story. The word "women's rights" naturally contains not the women's "rights" in the sense of feminist revolution, but the highest "power" of feudal rule. As early as the late Qing Dynasty, a woman named He Zhen denied the same concept of women and examined women's social gender in class theory. In her view, gender equality is not simply that men do not suppress women's gender equality, but that all people in society and class are equal. Queen Victoria of Britain, Lv Hou of China, Empress Wu Zetian and Cixi are all women in power, but they have not fundamentally changed the unequal society between men and women, which shows that a few women in power are very different from a few men in power and cannot bring about real equality between men and women. Therefore, we must first subvert the "rule of man" and "make the world without women and men." In this way, whether the phoenix is in front, the dragon is behind, or behind, it is not what we usually call a "feminist" symbol.
The reconstruction project of Cixi's mausoleum lasted for thirteen years until her death. The rebuilt Long 'en Hall and the East-West Attached Hall rank first in the Qing Emperor's Mausoleum in terms of expensive building materials, exquisite workmanship and luxurious decoration. Even compared with the imperial tombs of the Qing Dynasty, some imperial tombs are inferior to her. The luxury of her funerary objects is also staggering. Cixi's funerary objects are divided into two parts: the treasure placed in the golden well in the tomb before his death and the buried treasure.
After the death of Cixi, she put all the treasures she plundered in her life into the coffin. According to the Qing Palace archives "Chronicle of Empress Dowager", Cixi put six batches of treasures into Jinjing before her death. And how many treasures are buried with him? His confidant eunuch Li personally attended the treasure burial ceremony of Cixi. According to "Notes on Love Moon Xuan" written by him and his nephew, before Cixi's body entered the coffin, there were three layers of gold beads and a layer of pearls at the bottom of the coffin, which was one foot thick. Cixi's body was placed between the lotus leaf and the lotus flower. The head is made of emerald lotus leaf, which is green and full and exquisite. The ribs on the leaves are not carved, they all grow naturally. Pink tourmaline lotus under your feet. Wearing a crown bead, the largest pearl in the crown is four to two times as heavy as an egg, and it is worth12 million silver. This is a rare treasure in the world. Wearing a colorful embroidered robe with gold beads. There is a big peony flower made of pearl on the quilt she covers, and the bracelet is a big chrysanthemum inlaid with diamonds and six small plum blossoms. There are twenty-seven Buddha statues carved with gold, rubies, jade and jade beside him. Put two emerald watermelons, melons and cabbages on both sides of your feet. Emerald watermelon is green, with red flesh, black seeds and white silk. One of the jadeite melons is green skin and yellow seed meat, and the other is white skin and yellow seed powder meat; Two turquoise cabbages, with green leaves and white hearts, are covered with a green slug, and two yellow wasps are parked next to the leaves. On the left side of Cixi's body, there is a jade lotus, three sections of which are from jade lotus root, including natural plaster, green lotus leaf, pink lotus flower and a jet water chestnut. There is a jade carving red coral tree on the right side of the body, with a flat peach and red leaves, and a kingfisher parked at the top of the tree. There are more than 200 peaches, plums, apricots and dates made of precious stones. Put a Yu Lian on the left and a jade coral tree on the right. In addition, there are eight jade horses and eighteen jade arhats, totaling more than 700 pieces. After the funeral, four liters of pearls and 2200 rubies and sapphires were poured into the coffin, filling the gap in the coffin. There are 500 eight-point pearls, 1000 two-point pearls and 2200 three-point pearls in four liters of pearls. Gems and pearls are worth about 2.23 million silver. According to the Records of the Interior Office, the number and types of jewels and jades buried in the coffin are extremely amazing, which is almost a complete collection of jewels and jades. These treasures are all carved from natural materials, which is extremely rare in terms of material selection, not to mention the ingenuity of conception and carving. According to people's estimation at that time, the value of this rare treasure is not the personal dedication of the royal relatives and princes, but only the record of the royal funerary objects, which is worth 52 million taels of silver! As for the artistic value of these treasures, it is incalculable and priceless. The coffin of Empress Dowager Cixi is the most precious in the world.
1928, Sun Dianying, the 1st12nd commander of the National Revolutionary Army stationed near Dongling, Zunhua, Hebei Province, had the idea of Dongling and sent his teacher Tan Wenjiang to inquire about the situation. Tan Wenjiang learned through the mouth of a eunuch who had served Cixi that there were a lot of rare treasures buried in the tomb of Cixi in Ding Dong Mausoleum, so he copied the Notes of Aiyue Xuan from the eunuch. A treasure map of Cixi, and "After the filial piety, I will go to the funeral, send the clothes version and enjoy the clothes". After finding out the situation, Tan Wenjiang proposed to Sun Dianying the suggestion of excavating the tomb of Cixi. On July 1928 and 1, Sun Dianying ordered Tan Wenjiang to strictly observe all the main roads in Dongling to prevent others from entering. After driving the troops of two brigades into Dongling, he began to explore the entrance to the underground palace, and planned to leave Dongling on the grounds of changing the defense after the robbery, blaming the incident on bandits. After some twists and turns, the soldiers who robbed the tomb found the entrance to the underground palace of Cixi. Entering the ancient cave gate from under the Ming building, at the end of the corridor is a wall with steel bars cast, and the entrance to the underground palace is under this "King Kong Wall". From July 4th to July 10, guns kept coming from Dongling. The locals thought it was a war and no one dared to go out. But what they didn't expect was that the two mausoleums had been exploded. The soldiers who entered the underground palace of Cixi did not expect that they entered the main tomb very smoothly and saw the coffins and buried treasures effortlessly. The main tomb of Cixi is a stone chamber paved entirely with white marble, with a white marble platform in the middle, that is, the "treasure bed". Above the stone platform, there is a huge coffin. On the two stone piers on both sides, there are incense treasures and album pages recording Cixi posthumous title. How did the grave robbers open Cixi's coffin? This used to be a mystery. It was not until many years later that a book called Miscellanies of Shizaitang revealed the memory of a company commander allegedly involved in grave robbery that the mystery was solved. According to the company commander, in order to pry open the inner coffin of Cixi, the radiant gold-painted outer coffin was smashed by bandits' knives and axes. After the robbers removed the cut wood, they found a coffin painted red. Officials worried that the knife and axe would damage the treasure in the coffin, and ordered the bandits to pry it open carefully with a knife. "At that time, the coffin was opened and the glow was full. Every soldier was holding a big flashlight, and the light was taken away, and everyone was frightened. Looking down at the coffin, the Queen Mother was lifelike, with white and hairy fingers ... There was no jewelry in the coffin, the big one was taken away by the officials, and the small one was put in the soldier's pocket. So the commander ordered to take off the dragon robe and find the jewels with him. "