01.02.09 Ming Tombs

We started the day a little earlier to get to the World Heritage site, the Ming tombs. We took two busses and arrived to the Changling around noon. The Ming tombs are located on the north side of Beijing and around the same area (huge area) are the mausoleums of Ming dynasty emperors. Most of the emperors are buried there and during their reign they build these mausoleums where they would be buried with their wife and lots of valuable objects.


The emperors build inside huge walls few buildings and a Soul Tower behind which, they would be buried inside burial buildings build inside a hill that was filled with trees. In Changling the actual burial building was untouched and had not been excavated. But after Changling, we went to Dingling, which is another tomb that they have excavated. In Dingling you can go into the halls of the burial building and see the coffin of Emperor Ding and his two wifes and all the boxes filled with valuables that were buried with the Emperor and Empresses. The coffins are replicas, because the actual ones were partly decayed. In the show rooms, however, you can see some of the objects buried with the Emperor and Empress. There are growns, hairpins, jewelry, clothes and other jade and gold objects.


After we came back to Beijing, we went for dinner and bought a chinese book for me from the Foreign Language Bookstore. The cover of the book says "Chinese in 3 months", so we'll see what happens :)