Deciphering the Mystery of the Death of the Guangxu Emperor (Part 1)
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▲ The Guangxu Emperor's funeral row photographed by foreigners, because his successor Xuantong Emperor Puyi later became a citizen, he also became an unprecedented Chinese emperor who was photographed by foreigners for his funeral
Once, when Mr. Chen Yue, president of the Chinese Naval History Research Association, talked about the Sino-Japanese War, he put forward a new point of view, arguing that the personalities of the monarchs of the two countries at that time may also have an impact on the outcome of the war, and this can also be seen from their childhood toys.
Japan's then-Emperor Munehito, whose era name was Meiji, led the Meiji Restoration in Japan. After his death, a memorial service was held in Japan, when the toys he used as a child were exhibited. This box of toys, including dolls, wall charts, etc., is quite neat and intact, and in general, it is normal.
The Guangxu Emperor of the Qing Dynasty also had a box of toys that could be preserved, in which the hair of the velvet orangutan was all plucked out, and the eyes of the puppet lion were also pulled off, which seemed to show that the emperor had some impatience and had certain psychological problems at an early age.
And the person who kept this box of toys for Guangxu was Actually Empress Dowager Cixi, which made people even more unbearable to sigh - they didn't want the relationship between Cixi and Guangxu, and there was such a side.
Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty, the penultimate emperor of the dynasty, witnessed the entire process of the dynasty's collapse. His entire reign was always in the shadow of Empress Dowager Cixi. This aunt, who was revered by the Guangxu Emperor as the "Imperial Father", was the actual ruler of the late Qing Dynasty, from listening to the government from hanging the curtain to imprisoning Yingtai, at the political level, the game between Guangxu and Cixi had reached the point of endless death in the later period.
On November 14, 1908, Guangxu "died", Chinese New Year's Eve seven years old, and the next day, Cixi also returned to the west, ending her nearly fifty years of rule over China.
▲ Cixi and Guangxu
The Guangxu on this picture is actually a portrait. Due to Cixi's suppression and dilution, no one knows his true appearance to this day. With the exception of one photograph taken from above the side during his return in 1901, all the photographs of the so-called emperor handed down today are unsubstantiated or proved to be impersonating others. The emperor, who was obscured by Cixi, can be called the mysterious Son of Heaven in the late Qing Dynasty.
Guangxu is mysterious because there are many mysteries in him. One of the most remarkable is the death of the emperor. Guangxu and Cixi were thirty-six years apart in age, but they died almost simultaneously. Due to the sharp contradiction between Guangxu and Cixi, there have been rumors that the Guangxu Emperor was the victim of Cixi.
This view is obviously inconsistent with the records of the Tai Hospital at that time, according to the pulse case of the Tai Doctors, Guangxu belonged to a long illness and finally died normally, during which there was a process of serious illness to death. It is purely coincidental that it is close to the time of Cixi's death. But logically, anomalies are demons, and such coincidences in the context of the court, there must almost certainly be articles.
However, Guangxu's pulse case is conclusive, and many Tai Doctors' records say that Guangxu died of natural disease.
In March 1908, the imperial physician Cao Yuanheng wrote in the pulse case that the emperor's liver and kidney yin deficiency, spleen and yang deficiency, loss of qi and blood, the disease situation is very serious, in the treatment of whether it is cold medicine or warm dry medicine can not be used, in a serious situation of no medicine available. In the guangxu pulse case on the tenth day of the first month of May, the imperial doctor Chen Bingjun wrote that "the conditioning was long, and it was completely ineffective."
The pulse cases of the three days before his death were as follows: "The middle qi was weak, and he could not take the upper and lower parts, so that he was full of wheezing and coughing, and the lower was not able to defecate." The clear qi does not rise, the turbid qi does not fall, and the whole body is sleepy and tired", "the eyelids are small and white, the mouth has saliva and the corners of the lips move", "the pulse is like a silky desire." The limbs are cold and the air is trapped. The two eyes turned upwards, and the divine consciousness was already confused. The teeth are tightly closed, and the trend is about to fall out", and on the last day, the pulse breath is "if there is none, the eyes are looking straight, the lips are reversed, the nose is rubbed, and the yang is scattered and the yin is dry", and he dies in the evening.
So, to say that there is an article behind the death of the Guangxu Emperor, are these cases not credible?
To confirm this, we must first determine whether the pulse case of the late Qing Dynasty Tai Hospital is reliable. To be precise, the pulse case given to the emperor at that time was far from the real situation, and can be called a "political pulse case". There are Taiyi who recorded the pulse of the Guangxu Emperor at that time. Before going there, Cixi summoned him, and after a few words, Lafayette said that the emperor's kidneys were not good, and after saying that, he stared at the doctor.
What's not to like about that? Then the kidneys are not good, otherwise with the nature of Lafayette, the heart, liver, spleen and lungs of the doctor will not be too good.
Who knew that then there was a disturbance in the hospital, saying that the emperor had come, and when he saw that there were worms in the goji berries, he was furious, saying that it was no wonder that the disease of the taiyuan was not cured well, and that the hospital was not very careful, and I was afraid that I would have to see the blood.
Everyone was frightened and bowed their heads in sin. The emperor went away, and before leaving, he suddenly stopped in front of the doctor who was about to diagnose the pulse, and said that he was uncomfortable.
What's going on?
Someone who understood explained that the empress dowager and the emperor were in a fight. The empress dowager said that the emperor's kidneys were not good, why were the kidneys not good? Ridiculous. With this excuse, we can mention the matter of abolishing the emperor and replacing people. But there are also many people outside who support the emperor, the emperor said that the liver is not good, why is the liver not good? Gas! In this way, it can send a signal to the outside world that the empress dowager is bullying the Son of Heaven.
The question is what to do with the doctor?
When it was time to diagnose the pulse, the doctor said - back to the emperor, you are a little bit of a spleen problem...
▲ Guangxu pulse case
This doctor is smart and bold. However, it can be seen from this that the pulse case of the Tai Hospital is better to believe than not to believe.
Since Guangxu's death, there have been people trying to find out the truth of this matter for a hundred years. They found that shortly before Guangxu's death, a French doctor had done a physical examination for him, and concluded that the emperor was not in serious trouble except for a slight kidney problem. There is also a periodical of the Republic of China that records that when a certain doctor recalled that when Guangxu was diagnosing his pulse three days before his death, Guangxu cried out that his stomach hurt.
These records cannot but be questionable, but neither can they be said to be reliable evidence. For example, the periodicals of the Republic of China were. At that time, the media practitioners were uneven, often making up news without shame, so that posterity seemed to have no credibility, and it was good to have three or four points of truth.
Until 2008, the "Qing Guangxu Emperor Cause of Death" special research group released a research report, saying that medical experts through modern detection equipment, using a series of technical means such as "neutron activation", "X-ray fluorescence analysis", "atomic fluorescence luminosity" and so on, the hair, bones, clothes, etc. of the Guangxu Emperor were analyzed and studied, and the final conclusion was that the arsenic content of the Guangxu Emperor's hair and other places was extremely high, and it should be killed by arsenic poisoning - this is also the most used poison in ancient China.
The news sparked a stir at the time, but it was soon suggested that the conclusion was not necessarily truly scientific. Relevant people who put forward this view pointed out that the French Emperor Napoleon was also suspected of dysentery poisoning because of the identification of arsenic 5-33 times more in his hair, but the cause of his death has been questioned since then. As a result of the latest, the medical community suggests that the arsenic in his hair may have come from the outside environment rather than being poisoned.
▲ Since Napoleon's hair may have been contaminated with arsenic from the outside world after his death, why was it impossible for the Guangxu Emperor?
It has even been suggested that the problem may be inside the Guangxu Emperor's mausoleum, where the environment and pollution from the excavations caused the concentration of arsenic in his remains to be too high.
This statement actually intrigued me. This is because a senior in the media industry I know happens to be a witness to the excavation of Guangxu's remains. Was there really a possibility of arsenic contamination at the time? When the Tomb of the Guangxu Emperor was opened, what was the scene?
This media veteran is Mr. Xi Bing, former director of the International Cooperation Department of the China Television Drama Production Center. When this question was asked to him, Mr. Xi Bing happily accepted my interview and described to us the scene of participating in the excavation of the Guangxu Mausoleum at that time, which should be the first time we learned the mysterious details of this archaeological excavation.
▲ The Guangxu Emperor was buried in Chongling, in the territory of The Qingxi Mausoleum in Jinlongyu, Yi County, Hebei Province
As a weak emperor, Guangxu did not build his own mausoleum during his lifetime. After his death, in 1909, he began to build a mausoleum for him in the Qing Dynasty Mausoleum, which was for the Qing Chongling Tomb. The mausoleum was only completed in 1912, when the Republic of China had replaced the Qing Dynasty. According to the Agreement on the Abdication of the Qing Emperor, the Republic of China government had the responsibility to assist in the completion of Guangxu's funeral rites, and in 1913, together with the Small Imperial Court of the Sunqing Dynasty, the Guangxu Emperor was buried at Chongling. As a feudal emperor, Guangxu was buried under the auspices of a republican government.
Unfortunately, only twenty-six years later, the mausoleum of Guangxu was stolen and looted. Therefore, the archaeological excavation of Guangxu Chongling that Mr. Xibing participated in in 1980 is a typical rescue excavation for today.
Why did you choose to carry out this excavation of Guangxu's mausoleum in 1980?
Mr. Xi Bing, as a party, answered this question that had rarely been noticed before. It turned out that the cause of the excavation of the Guangxu Tomb was that the staff found a robbery cave on the Tai Ling, which also belonged to the Qing Xi Mausoleum.
Tailing, the imperial tomb of the Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, is also the largest mausoleum of the Qing Dynasty, located about four kilometers southwest of Chongling. In the spring of 1980, Chen Baorong, director of the Qingxi Tombs Cultural Relics Conservation Center, found a robbery hole in the right front of the glass shadow wall of the Tailing Crescent City while patrolling, suspecting that the Tailing Underground Palace had been stolen, so he reported it to the State Administration of Cultural Relics through the management office. The State Administration of Cultural Heritage therefore approved Hebei's application for the excavation of the Tailing Tombs ("Application for the Rescue and Excavation of the Tailing Underground Palace"). On April 8, Hebei Province, Baoding City and Yi County Cultural Relics Bureau jointly began excavations of Tailing, but the actual excavations found that the robbery cave only went down to about two meters underground and then disappeared - this is a failed to penetrate the underground palace, failed to break through the cave. At the same time, experts have determined that this robbery cave was not formed recently, but should be committed by thieves before the founding of the Country, so there is no sign of theft in Tailing, and there is no danger of theft for the time being.
▲ The Tailing Tombs may be the mausoleums with the most preserved cultural relics and the most excavated value in the tombs of the Qing Emperors
Because there were technical problems in the excavation of the Ming Tombs, some of the excavated cultural relics could not be well preserved, and Premier Zhou Enlai personally issued an order to stop the excavation of the imperial tombs. Under such circumstances, Mr. Xia Nai, director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, urged the suspension of excavations of The Tailing. This proposition is supported by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage. Ren Qianbin, director of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, and Sun Xianyi, deputy director of the Bureau, accompanied Mr. Xia Nai to the QingXi Mausoleum, stopped the continued excavation of the TaiLing Tomb, and ordered the backfilling of the stolen cave.
From today's perspective, this is undoubtedly a correct decision. However, for the Hebei cultural relics department, which is very much looking forward to it, it is undoubtedly a bit disappointing.
Perhaps for this reason, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, while stopping the excavation of the Tailing Tombs, gave the Hebei side a consolation prize - if the Qingxi Tombs have stolen tombs, they can be excavated to rescue the remaining cultural relics.
Among the Qing Dynasty tombs, the only one that was sure to have been stolen was the Chongling Tomb of the Guangxu Emperor.
In July, the Cultural Relics Department of Hebei Province issued an order to excavate Chongling. Considering the workload of excavation, in addition to the personnel of the Cultural Relics Bureau, there are also PLA troops who have sent people to participate in archaeology. Mr. Xi Bing, who was working as a trainee reporter for Hebei Television at the time, served as an assistant to Tian Ronglin, a photographer in charge of shooting archaeological documentaries of excavations. In general, it felt that the archaeological work at that time was relatively weak, and the Cultural Relics Bureau came with two staff members, also with cameras, but because of the meager budget, it was impossible to continue after taking a batch of photos. The key problem speculating here is that according to the regulations at that time, cultural relics within three hundred years are not counted, plus there have been stolen here, and there may not be many remaining cultural relics, so the excavation of The Guangxu Chongling Tomb is not too high.
▲ Tomb of Zhenfei and Tomb of Concubine Jin
When Mr. Xi Bing arrived at the scene, the first thing he saw was that there were two steamer cage-shaped tombs outside the Chongling Tomb, and when he asked the people around him, he realized that it was originally the two tombs of Zhenfei and Jinfei. Although the only woman Guangxu may have loved in his life was Zhenfei, according to the etiquette system, he could only be buried with Cixi's niece, Empress Longyu, whom he did not like, and Zhenfei could only be buried outside the door, so involuntarily that people could only sigh at the emperor.
Inside the mausoleum, there are only overgrown weeds, and although the buildings are less than a hundred years old, they are already dilapidated. This excavation also had a maintenance task, and Mr. Xi Bing saw two workers pushing a trolley, lifting the copper incense burner in front of the spirit, and throwing it in with a bang, ready to push away the repair.
This is very normal, within three hundred years, it is not a cultural relic.
Work began on the same day, and in addition to the two staff members of the Antiquities Bureau, there were sappers and a military doctor present. The medic played a key role as a forensic doctor in subsequent archaeology. In fact, the cultural relics department has previously carried out a certain investigation to determine that the robbery cave can be accessed into the underground palace, and also examined the basic situation in the underground palace, confirming that the coffins of the Guangxu Emperor were indeed excavated.
They first came to the front of the robbery cave. The location of this cave is in front of the glass shadow wall, indicating that the tomb robbers are very experienced. Under normal circumstances, the underground behind the glass shadow wall is the burial passage where the coffin is transported into the underground palace.
"It is very important to go to the scene, after seeing the situation of the robbery cave, we can basically restore the Guangxu Tomb that was stolen by whom." Mr. Xi Bing said.
Is that right? I remember that there were some descriptions on the Internet of the cause and effect of the theft of the Guangxu Tomb. It is roughly as follows: "In the autumn of 1938, an unidentified group of soldiers sneaked into Chongling, and they pried open the bricks and stones of the mound from the front of the crescent city wall of Fangcheng, chiseled the underground city bricks, dug a deep hole, and dug through the soil layer under the crescent stone shadow wall and then dug up, and then entered the tunnel ticket of the underground palace. These people are familiar with the structure of Chongling and are also very skilled in excavating. They did not encounter stone doors and obstacles and use explosives to collapse like Sun Dianying, but used pine poles and wood chips to open the tap stones of each stone door and enter the golden coupons... Some people heard that this gang sold the stolen gold, silver, beads and jade utensils to the Eight Kingdoms Church in Western Beijing in exchange for five hundred sets of cotton military uniforms. ”
"It should just be a rumor." Mr. Xi Bing said, "There is nothing about the army, it should be a child who stole Guangxu's tomb, and only this child went down to the underground palace alone." ”
【To be continued】