What this day is for
This is a study day, not a sightseeing stop, and it is built around a single underground space. Dingling is the tomb of the Wanli emperor, Zhu Yijun, and of his two empresses, and it is the only imperial tomb of the Ming dynasty ever to be excavated. That fact carries two stories at once: what the excavation found, and what it destroyed. Both are taught here, and the second is the reason no imperial tomb in China has been opened since.
Morning - the burial of an emperor
Construction began in 1584 and took six years; it was finished in 1590 at a cost recorded as eight million taels of silver, and the emperor lived another thirty years after it was sealed. The tomb covers about 180,000 square metres in the classic plan - a square walled forecourt in front, a circular mound behind - and we walk the above-ground sequence first: the gate, the hall of offerings, the stele pavilion and the square tower, learning what each element did in the ritual of the burial and in the ongoing rites that followed it. The mound itself is a walled circle filled with earth and topped with a plastered dome, and the underground palace lies directly beneath that dome.
Midday - the excavation, 1956 to 1958
We then go down. Excavation began in May 1956 and ran to July 1958, conducted by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and others - the first imperial tomb in the People's Republic to be opened under a formal state-approved plan. Your guide reconstructs the approach: the search for the entrance, the brick tunnel and then the stone tunnel, and finally the sealed wall at the end of them that had to be opened without knowing what was behind it. The underground palace has five chambers - three in a line front to back, with two side halls off the middle one - running 87.34 metres end to end and 47.28 metres across, a total floor area of 1,195 square metres. Each marble door has eighty-one bronze studs set in nine rows of nine, and the doors were held shut from inside by a falling stone bar, a lock that was designed never to open.
Lunch
Lunch near the tomb site.
Afternoon - what came out, and what was lost
The excavation produced close to three thousand objects, in a range nobody had expected: crowns, robes, gold vessels, jade, ceramics, and the emperor's everyday possessions as well as purpose-made burial goods. The gold wire crown is the only emperor's crown ever recovered in China, woven from fine gold wire and weighing 826 grammes; a twelve-dragon and nine-phoenix headdress found in the same chamber is among the most elaborate empress's crowns known. What makes this the most instructive half of the day is the other column in the ledger. Silks, lacquer, wood and paper came out of a sealed environment and disintegrated on contact with the air; conservation knowledge and facilities simply did not exist in the 1950s, and the damage was irreversible. The museum opened on the site in September 1959, with its name inscribed by Guo Moruo. Your guide closes the day on the policy consequence: since then China has excavated imperial tombs only when they are threatened, never to see what is inside.
Suitable for
Secondary and university groups, and any general traveller with an interest in archaeology. There is a considerable amount of walking outdoors and a long staircase down into and back up out of the underground palace; the site is exposed and the courtyard is unshaded. Tea where the early Ming emperors were buried, thirty miles north of the city, is also the reason the day is worth leaving early for.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
