Dingling Mausoleum

indeed seems impregnable until the archaeologists realized that the central part of it could be easily dismantled, by pulling out the blocks of which it is composed, one by one, like pulling drawers from a chest.

Sun remembers vividly when the first stone block was pulled out.

“There was a clear puff, accompanied by a plume of dark smoke. The air, trapped inside for more than three centuries and thick with the smell of mold, charged out.

Wearing a face mask and with a rope tied to his waist, Zhao, fresh from the Archaeology Department of Peking University, was the first to get in.

“The sleeves and both parts of his trousers were sealed tightly so no noxious air could enter,” Sun says.

When Zhao arrived at the stone gate standing right behind the wall, it was closed. Under the light of an electric torch, he discerned a narrow opening in between the two stone panels. Pressing himself against that opening, he could see a huge rectangular stone slab leaning against the panels from inside the chamber. It was a lock, a firm one — anyone who wished to enter the forbidden ground needed to find a way to remove the stone — from the outside.

Zhao’s answer to the challenge was some thick iron wire.

“He fashioned the wires into a half circle with a long handle and then gradually put that circle through the opening, noosed the stone slab on the top and pushed,” says Yang, who has lived in a retirement home in suburban Beijing since her husband died at the age of 84 in 2010.

“The upper edge of the stone slab, the part that was in contact with the gate, was slightly lifted backward, so the gate could be pushed open just a little bit,” she says.

A little bit indeed, but big enough for Sun, back then a thin 18-yearold, to squeeze through.

That was in May 1957. A year had passed from when the team members had dug out their first shovel of dirt.

Lost treasures

Three months after that the archaeologists opened the wooden coffins of the emperor and his two empresses, coffins that had lain in the innermost room of this five-room burial chamber. Some parts of the coffins had rotted away, or even collapsed. And the corpses had long been reduced to bones. But what was found inside the coffins, including brocaded fabrics and accessories made of silver, gold and jade, stunned the archaeological world in China and beyond.

However, due to a lack of adequate conservation methods, many precious objects, fabrics in particular, were exposed to the air and suffered irreversible damages.

“The luster retained for centuries thanks to the lack of oxygen inside the tomb was lost forever,” says Yang, who married Zhao in the winter of 1957, a few months after the excavation was completed.

“The loss was genuinely mourned by everyone who had taken part in the excavation.”

In fact, in 1956, before digging started, opinions had been divided on whether it should go ahead. Those who opposed it warned of the significance of the task and the gravity of the matter if anything went wrong.

But eventually, Zhou Enlai, the Chinese premier, gave the nod. After the warning had turned at least partly into reality, Zhou, petitioned by a group of saddened archaeologists, ruled that there would be no further excavation of any imperial tomb, neither in his lifetime nor before the Chinese archaeological world was become fully prepared. That decree still holds power today.

‘Thrilled cry’

Zhao, who later earned his renown as a historian and archaeologist who was an expert on the history of Beijing, died in the winter of 2010.

“He suffered respiratory problems for nearby three decades before death,” Yang says.

“I always felt that the disease had something to do with his time spent in the burial chamber. At the time, senior members of the team often reminded him to put on a face mask, but often he would overlook the precaution. He was so young and everything was so exciting.”

Sun, who spent most of his time with the team carrying either a kerosene light or an electric generator, says the most memorable moment took place when he entered the tomb, through that slit of opening between two stone slabs.

“I was so scared. It was still and chilly, but eventually everyone let out that thrilled cry.”