Ming Tombs and Changling: The Yongle Emperor's Burial Site

The Ming Tombs are the burial ground of 13 emperors of China’s Ming dynasty, set in a valley north-west of Beijing. The necropolis began in 1409, when the Yongle Emperor chose the site and started work on his own tomb, Changling. Changling remains the largest and best-preserved tomb in the valley, and the whole complex is one of the finest examples of Chinese imperial funerary planning.

Background: a new capital needs a new burial ground

The Yongle Emperor, Zhu Di, seized the throne in 1402 after the Jingnan Campaign against his nephew. His power base was in the north, around the former Mongol capital that became Beijing, and he soon decided to move the seat of government there from Nanjing.

His father, the Hongwu Emperor, had been buried at Xiaoling outside Nanjing. When Yongle’s empress, Empress Xu, died in 1407, the emperor did not bury her in the south. Instead he sent officials and geomancers, experts in feng shui (the traditional art of siting buildings in harmony with landscape), to find a burial ground near Beijing.

Choosing the valley

The site they chose in 1409 lies at the foot of the Tianshou (“Heavenly Longevity”) Mountains, in what is now Changping District. A horseshoe of hills shelters the valley on the north, east and west, opening to the south, the ideal arrangement in feng shui. Small streams cross the plain, and two low hills guard the southern entrance like gateposts.

Work on Changling began in 1409, at the same time as the emperor was planning his new palace, the Forbidden City. Empress Xu was moved from Nanjing and interred there in 1413. The emperor himself died in 1424 while returning from a campaign against the Mongols, and was buried in Changling later that year.

What was built at Changling

Changling follows a layout that later Ming tombs copied on a smaller scale. A series of courtyards leads from a main gate to the Ling’en Hall, the Hall of Eminent Favour, where sacrifices were offered to the dead emperor. Completed in 1427, it is one of the largest surviving wooden halls in China, supported by 60 columns of precious nanmu wood, the biggest more than a metre thick.

Behind the hall stand a stone altar and a square tower, the Soul Tower, which carries a stele naming the tomb. Behind the tower rises a huge circular earth mound enclosed by a wall. The burial chamber lies beneath this mound. It has never been opened, so its contents are unknown.

At the death of the Yongle Emperor, according to Ming and Korean records, several of his consorts were forced to die so that they could accompany him, a practice the early Ming emperors had followed. It was abolished in 1464 by Emperor Yingzong, then reigning as the Tianshun Emperor, who had earlier been captured by the Mongols in the Tumu Crisis.

The Spirit Way and the later tombs

The valley is approached along a ceremonial road called the Spirit Way. Its most famous section is lined with 36 stone figures set up in 1435: pairs of lions, camels, elephants, horses and mythical beasts, followed by generals and civil officials. A stele pavilion and the Great Red Gate stand at its southern end, and a marble archway was added in 1540.

Over the next two centuries, 12 more emperors were buried in the valley, each in his own walled tomb at the foot of the hills. The last, the Chongzhen Emperor, who died in 1644 as rebels took Beijing, was placed in a consort’s tomb that the new Qing dynasty then enlarged.

Excavation and preservation

Only one tomb in the valley has been excavated: Dingling, the tomb of the Wanli Emperor, opened in 1956–1958. Archaeologists found the emperor’s coffin, crowns, silk and many other objects, but the poor conservation methods of the time caused serious damage to textiles and to the bodies. This experience contributed to a policy in China of not excavating imperial tombs unless they are under threat.

The Ming Tombs were added in 2003 to the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Imperial Tombs of the Ming and Qing Dynasties”. Changling, Dingling and the Spirit Way are open to visitors.

Timeline

• 1402: Zhu Di takes the throne as the Yongle Emperor.
• 1407: Empress Xu dies in Nanjing.
• 1409: The valley north of Beijing is chosen and work on Changling begins.
• 1413: Empress Xu is buried at Changling.
• 1421: Beijing formally becomes the main capital of the Ming dynasty.
• 1424: The Yongle Emperor dies on campaign and is buried at Changling.
• 1427: The Ling’en Hall of Changling is completed.
• 1435: The stone statues of the Spirit Way are set up.
• 1956–1958: Dingling, the Wanli Emperor’s tomb, is excavated.
• 2003: The Ming Tombs are inscribed as part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Changling fixed the model for imperial burial in Ming and later Qing China, uniting landscape, architecture and ritual in one planned whole. Together with the Forbidden City it shows how the Yongle Emperor rooted his dynasty in Beijing, and it preserves one of the great wooden buildings of early fifteenth-century China.