The Tombs of Nanjing

By: Bill Patch

Dr. WeiZhong Xia, Visiting Scholar and Professor of History at Nanjing University, delivered a slide lecture on April 26 entitled "’You CAN take it with you': Grave Goods and Epitaphs in Ming Nanjing, 1368-1694," with translation by Professor Andrew Hsieh.

Professor Xia described a series of accidental archeological discoveries since 1952, as major new construction projects around Nanjing and, the activities of grave-robbers have brought to light hundreds of long forgotten tombs, including those of the founder of the Ming Dynasty, high noble court officials, lesser civil servants, and merchants and professional people. Because families of the deceased placed great emphasis on burying all the favorite objects of their loved ones for enjoyment in the afterlife, these tombs have yielded a multitude of beautiful items of jewelry and personal ornamentation, which enhance our understanding of the material comforts available to members of each social class.

The audience enjoyed many slides of intricately carved belts, caps, hairpins, broaches, and earrings made of jade and gold, ornamented imaginatively with the shapes of butterflies, lotus flowers, the phoenix, dragons, and even spiders. Most useful for the historian are the epitaphs from the tombs, which include surprisingly detailed life histories. Professor Xia has collected 450 such epitaphs, from members of a wide variety of social classes; their systematic analysis is still in its early stages, but some interesting findings can be reported already. The epitaphs definitely confirm, for example, the suspicion that Ming China was a rigorously patriarchal society. A number of tombs of women have been discovered, which are sometimes quite magnificent, but their life stories are told almost exclusively in terms of the accomplishments of their husbands and/or children.

Professor Xia and his colleagues have demonstrated that Nanjing has a rich cultural heritage, probably the richest of any Chinese city other than Beijing, and they are excited in particular about the prospect of studying the many tombs of commoners that have recently come to light, in order to compare them with the better known tombs of the Imperial family and high nobility. This lecture was co-sponsored by the Grinnell Department of History and the Grinnell-Nanjing Exchange Program.