Ming Tombs
The Ming dynasty was born in violence and fell in violence, but for 270 years, the tombs of its emperors exemplified wealth and stability
The resting place of China’s emperors
The Ming dynasty arose from a revolt against foreign rule when Chinese rebels threw out the Mongols in 1368. The Mongol emperors were buried in their northern homeland, Mongolia.
But their successors from the Chinese heartland restored the ancient tradition of being buried in state near their capital, Beijing. Though damaged by the Manchus when they seized power in 1644, the Ming Tombs have been restored, and now form one of China’s greatest heritage sites.
Since seizing all of China in 1279, the Mongols had ruled as the Yuan dynasty for almost a century. But they never belonged; none of their rulers mastered Chinese and they despised and feared their subjects.
Mongol rule depended on power, upheld with ever-stricter laws and ever-fiercer punishments as chaos and violence spread. In 1331, the plague ravaged parts of China; famine followed; people fled their villages; the Yellow River broke its banks, drowning thousands and setting a new course to the sea; and in the plague-ravaged, flood-torn lowlands, rebels known as Red Turbans began to rip at the empire’s decaying flanks. Three of the main Red Turban groups, all controlling sections of the Yangtze, rivalled each other for the crown.
One of these was led by Zhu Yuanzhang, the Yuan’s nemesis and the most extraordinary man of the age, with odd, craggy features – large nose, big ears, bushy eyebrows and a prominent bulge on his skull. As a boy, he was given to a temple and became a monk, begging his way around, living in grim conditions.
He survived the famine of 1344 on grass and tree bark. In 1351, open rebellion started as peasants seized granaries to get at the grain and battered down jails to free prisoners. The following year, Zhu, aged 24, joined in and quickly rose to power, gathering an army of 20,000– 30,000. He built a team of scholarly advisers, winning a reputation for brilliance, idealism, discipline and vision. From destitute villager to monk, to field captain and successful general, his rise was astonishing.
Zhu began to see himself as an emperor-inwaiting. After disposing of his greatest Red Turban rival in 1363, he spun his image away from other rebels, with their reputation as warlords, and chose a new title for his future dynasty: Ming.
Intelligence, high ideals and good management paid off and Zhu seized Nanjing, which he declared his capital. Then on 9 September 1368, his general, Xu Da, arrived in Beijing. The Mongol emperor, Toghon Temur, saw the game was up and fled, taking his family, his household and a few guards with him. Five days later, Xu Da took the city against very little resistance.
Thousands of Mongols streamed back to the northern grasslands and named themselves the Northern Yuan, in the vain hope of returning south. The Yuan dynasty ended, and the Ming took over, with Zhu as the first emperor. The Zhu family inherited a vast estate – some 200 million people, one-third of the world’s population – and there was no civilisation to touch it for wealth, artistry or military power. Zhu, reigning as the Hongwu Emperor, could afford a large tomb, built by 100,000 labourers, in his first capital, Nanjing.
But Beijing was the true seat of power. His second-in-line heir, the Yongle Emperor, secured the throne by overthrowing his nephew, who vanished – an unsolved mystery – and had no tomb. Determined to eradicate all records of his predecessor, Yongle purged his court and government of bureaucrats, and ruled with an iron hand for 22 years.
He spent his reign amassing power and wealth, including rebuilding the Forbidden City as the centre of his government, financing a series of voyages of exploration that took Chinese ships to Africa and creating his massive tomb, the first of the 13 Ming tombs that lie 40-50 kilometres to the north west of Beijing. The 120-square-kilometre site was chosen according to the traditional principles of feng shui – wind and water. An approach road, seven kilometres long, leads through a great arch onto ‘Spirit Way’ – an ornate road made up of 18 pairs of stone statues including bureaucrats, camels, lions and elephants, some recumbent in obeisance. According to folklore, they were slid into position in winter, pushed along an ice-road that was made by spraying water on the roadway.
Yongle died in 1424 after a fruitless campaign into Mongolia and was buried in his mausoleum. No one knows what or who he was buried with, as excavation was banned in the 1950s by the communist government on the grounds that the grave was too important to risk opening.
After Yongle, all 12 of the later Ming emperors were buried in this valley, fanning out on either side of his tomb, separated by up to two kilometres. All have their own approaches, and most are now somewhat overgrown.
The Ming era was, on the whole, both prosperous and peaceful, experiencing just one notorious lapse. The Ming remained obsessed with their predecessors, the Mongols, and spent much of the nation’s wealth firstly on campaigns to suppress them and then on building and rebuilding the Great Wall in stone (it had been ignored by the Mongols, since they ruled on both sides of it). Their main inspiration to build was an incident in 1449, when the sixth emperor, Zhengtong, was persuaded to lead a campaign against the Mongols, only to get himself captured.
The Mongols had no idea how to take advantage of this stunning victory, and released their prisoner. By then the throne had been taken by his brother, who was forced out in 1457, when Zhengtong resumed office.
Perhaps the most intriguing of the Ming emperors was Wanli, who ruled for 48 years (15721620), the longest reign in the dynasty. In that time, he had eight sons and ten daughters by his wife and 16 concubines. Though effective when young, he became bitterly unhappy with palace life, which left him at the mercy of rituals and his disputatious bureaucrats.
For 15 years, he and his government could not agree on an heir: he wanted his third son by his favourite concubine, but was forced to back down. In protest, he went on strike, refusing to have anything to do with administration, leaving it all to his officials, so that when he died the government was virtually paralysed – as was he, as in old age he became so obese he needed help to stand up. His tomb, known as Dingling after its nearby village, is the dynasty’s second biggest.
In the late 1950s, the communist government switched their attention away from the Yongle Emperor’s tomb to focus on Wanli’s. Its contents were made into a museum, which was severely damaged during the Cultural Revolution ten years later. One finding made during the excavation work suggested that the emperor had become addicted to opium, which, if true,
"The Ming era was, on the whole, both prosperous and peaceful, experiencing just one notorious lapse"
would surely have contributed to his eventual decision to withdraw from government, and thus to the national decline.
By the time of his death, the Ming were facing a serious problem in the north east, one that would eventually cause their downfall. They had re-built the Great Wall to keep out not only the Mongols but also another northern tribe – the Jurchens, soon to be re-titled as the Manchus, after whom Manchuria is named. They had become a nationat-arms, with China as their target. In 1619, they advanced to the north-eastern wall, which ran from mountains, across a plain to the great coastal fortress of Shanhaiguan. A year later, the Jurchen leader, Hung Taiji, declared himself ruler of a new dynasty, Qing, choosing a Chinese name to reflect his ambitions for conquest.
At this point, a new character entered the story, “the Dashing Prince” (as he called himself), a bandit named Li Zicheng. He rose to infamy and fortune in what is now north-central China, where Ming oppression sparked widespread resentment. Warlords arose, Li Zicheng being the most successful. Ordinary people flocked to join him, swelling his army to 400,000. In April 1644, he was at the walls of Beijing.
In Beijing’s Forbidden City, the last Ming emperor, Chongzhen, was in an agony of indecision. Grief-stricken after the death of his favourite consort, Tian, and four of his sons, he replaced ministers every few weeks, to no effect.
Meanwhile, in the east, a general named Hong Chengchou had been drafted in to fight the Manchus, but a Chinese assault north of the
Great Wall led to catastrophe. An army of 130,000 was defeated and Hong surrendered to the Manchus. By now the Manchu leader Hung Taiji had died, being succeeded by a five-year-old, with the dead emperor’s younger brother, Prince Dorgon, in command.
A few days later, Li Zicheng made his move on Beijing. It was a walkover. Scaling ladders and mines were enough to clear a section of the city walls, and defectors opened a gate into the outer city, leaving only the older walls of the Imperial Palace City holding them back. Inside the palace, the emperor climbed a low hill to see the smoke from the burning city. The sight unhinged him.
He went back inside and told his wife to commit suicide. Having downed enough wine to make himself drunk, he decided to save his dozens of daughters and concubines from being raped by killing them. This he tried to do by stabbing them. Lunging incompetently at the screaming women, he wounded several, but failed to kill any of them.
That night, Li’s troops broke into the inner city and advanced on the palace. At dawn on 25 May, the emperor, dressed in golden silk as if for an audience, climbed back up the little hill and hanged himself from the beams of a pavilion, the name of which, ironically, was the Pavilion of Imperial Longevity. While hundreds of his staff committed suicide, his body was secretly cut down and hidden nearby.
The next day, Li Zicheng, riding a black horse, led a procession into the palace. He could not complete his revolution, because looting and killing had plunged Beijing into anarchy. But he did order a search for the emperor’s body at least, which when found was placed in the tomb of his favourite concubine, Tian. This is in an obscure corner of the Ming Tombs site, called Siling, part of the so-called concubine tombs. This explains why the last Ming emperor has no tomb to match his predecessors.
The truly decisive events leading to the end of the Ming were unfolding at Shanhaiguan. The Ming general, Wu Sangui, was in a quandary. His much-loved concubine, Yuanyuan, was in war-torn Beijing, the Manchus were pressing on the Wall and Li Zicheng was now on his way to crush him. He needed help, and the only help available would come from the Manchus. He wrote to Prince Dorgon, suggesting temporary co-operation to restore peace. Dorgon, of course, had nothing to lose, and an empire to gain.
Wu opened the gates of Shanhaiguan. Dorgon’s troops poured through. The fort’s massive two-ton cannon, cast only the previous year, never saw action, and still stands on the battlements as a memorial to a battle that never was.
There are many gaps in this story. Is Wu a hero for opposing Li, who caused the death of an emperor? Or a villain for allowing the Manchus in? Or a hero for the same act – an agent of heaven, perhaps – given that the Manchus created a new dynasty? And what happened to the beautiful concubine, Yuanyuan?
Ultimately, Li was driven insane by the change in his fortunes. To have toppled the Ming only to be toppled himself, all in six weeks, was just too much. He set fire to the palace, grabbed what treasure he could and fled, leaving the shattered city to the Manchus.
" He decided to save his dozens of daughters from being raped by killing them"