One valley, thirteen emperors
The Ming tombs occupy a bowl in the hills at Tianshou Shan in Changping, about forty kilometres north of the city, where thirteen emperors were buried between 1409 and the fall of the dynasty. The site was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2003 as part of the Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties. What makes it worth a full day rather than a stop is that the tombs share one approach, and the approach is the best-preserved piece of Ming ceremonial landscape in existence.
Morning - the Sacred Way
We walk it in the direction it was meant to be walked, south to north, from the great stone archway to the Dragon and Phoenix Gate - about two and a half kilometres. The archway is the largest marble memorial arch in China, built in 1540 with five bays, six pillars and eleven roofs. Beyond it the Great Red Gate marks the boundary of the burial ground, and beyond that the stele pavilion holds a tablet 7.9 metres tall. Then the avenue of stone figures: eighteen pairs, thirty-six pieces in all, carved from single blocks, in a fixed order - lion, xiezhi, camel, elephant, qilin and horse, two pairs of each, one standing and one kneeling, then two pairs each of military officials, civil officials and meritorious officials. Your guide does not treat them as statues. Each animal is an argument about the empire, and the sequence tells you what the state wanted a visitor to feel on the way in.
Lunch
Lunch near the tomb area.
Afternoon - Changling, then Dingling
Changling is the tomb of the Yongle emperor, Zhu Di, and his empress Xu. Construction ran from 1409 to 1427, about eighteen years, and it is the earliest and largest of the thirteen. Its hall of offerings is the only Ming imperial tomb hall still standing, and it is a building of the first rank: nine bays across a frontage of 66.56 metres, five bays deep at 29.12 metres, under a double-eaved hip roof, carried inside on sixty whole trunks of nanmu, the largest of them 1.124 metres across at the base and 12.58 metres tall. It is a hall that makes the argument for the Ming state in timber, and it is the reason we come here rather than to the tombs that have been rebuilt. From there, the last stop is Dingling, the tomb of the Wanli emperor, excavated between 1956 and 1958 - the only imperial tomb of the Ming ever opened. We go down into the five-chamber underground palace, 87.34 metres long and 1,195 square metres in area, and finish in the museum that displays what came out of it.
Combining note
This route overlaps in subject with our study day on the Dingling excavation, and groups that have booked that should take this one for the Sacred Way and Changling only; tell your guide and the day can be rebalanced toward the landscape. Walking is three to four kilometres on flat ground and gravel paths, plus a long staircase in and out of the underground palace.
Meals
Lunch
Accommodation
Day programme - no hotel night included.
