Many times, we think it is still yesterday, but in fact, it has reached tomorrow or farther into the future. Man's long life is only a short moment, it is on the beach of history, looking for heavy or interesting stories, occasionally indulging in the past, but never staying. Today, it walked into the story of a pearl of night and came to the Qing Dynasty.
China has gone through several dynasties, and the fate of the Qing Dynasty can be described as a period of great ups and downs, and during its prosperous period, the people lived in peace, the economy developed, and the national strength was strong. However, the sadness after the prosperity is also reluctant to mention, the people's suffering is not taken care of, and the officials of the DPRK and the Central Government are oppressing the people in a different way. They were like blood-sucking insects, lying on Daqing's body, greedily absorbing fresh blood, so that Daqing walked on the road of no return step by step.
By the end of the Qing Dynasty, the situation was getting worse and worse, the officials were extravagant and corrupt, and the power in the court was basically in the hands of one person, who was very familiar to everyone, that is, Empress Dowager Cixi.
I believe that many people know what Cixi has done, and although she is the controller of power, she has not done what a person in power in a country should do. When she held power, she lived extravagantly, completely disregarding the people and officials in the DPRK, and what was even more unbelievable was that she actually withheld military expenses and used it to run her own birthday feast. So faint and pathless, the end of the Great Qing is actually already doomed invisibly.
Cixi could be said to be the largest blood-sucking insect in Daqing before her death, and after her death, she also fiercely let Daqing bleed again. At that time, the Qing Dynasty was already in danger, but she still demanded a funeral. The scale of her funeral exceeded that of every member of the Qing Dynasty, and the number of funeral items was staggering. However, Cixi at that time probably did not expect that the edifice of the Great Qing Dynasty would completely collapse in a short time, and the large wealth in her tomb had become the target of the newly rising warlords.
Twenty years is a long time for man, but for the world, it is just a cycle of change. In the twenty years since Cixi's death, the Great Qing dynasty has ceased to exist, and many things have undergone earth-shaking changes, but this has nothing to do with her, and the only thing that can make her unrest after her death is probably the fact that the mausoleum has been dug up.
In 1908, after losing their emperor Guangxu, the people of the Qing Dynasty lost cixi, the real ruler of the Qing Dynasty. Although Cixi's status in the open is not as high as that of the emperor, in fact, the officials in the court do not put the emperor in their eyes and vigorously curry favor with Cixi, so the real status of the two is that Cixi is much higher than that of the emperor, which is why the scale of Cixi's funeral exceeds that of the Guangxu Emperor so much.
However, although Cixi took away a lot of wealth after her death, she was not able to enjoy them as she wished.
In 1928, China was in a state of warlord melee. Warlords are everywhere, the people are suffering, and wars are basically patronizing this land every day. Here, everyone is either empty or ambitious, and there is not a glimmer of hope for peace. And it was also in this year that someone attacked Cixi's mausoleum, and this person was the warlord Sun Dianying stationed in Hebei.
Sun Dianying was still very cautious about the tomb robbery, and for this reason, he also found an excellent excuse. He first stationed near Cixi's mausoleum under the banner of suppressing bandits, and then, under the pretext of military exercises, he reasonably arranged a large number of people to stand guard nearby and secretly began the project of excavating the mausoleum. Since there was no delay in time, they dug non-stop during the day and night, but even so, it took them three days to reach the tomb passage.
After entering the tomb, they moved the funerary goods back and forth several times, and after the funerary goods were moved, they started the idea of the coffin again. They split the coffin, and after taking away the jewels, Sun Dianying noticed that there seemed to be something else in Cixi's mouth, emitting a faint light in the darkness. After realizing that it might be a treasure, Sun Dianying tried to open the mouth of the corpse with his hand to take the thing out, but cixi's teeth were closed and did not mean to open it at all. So he found a knife, cut his mouth open, and finally, got the treasure.
The treasure was a pearl of extremely high quality, and Sun Dianying carefully put it away.
According to Yu Shanpu's "Records of the Theft of treasures from Sun Dianying's Dongling Tomb":
"The architecture of the Cixi Mausoleum is luxurious, surpassing the tombs of all the emperors of the Qing Dynasty, especially the jewels buried in the coffins. After the death of Cixi on October 22, the 34th year of Guangxu (1908 AD), the eunuch Li Lianying participated in the funeral and included the burial treasures one by one. ”
He also said:
"The bandits first took away the large treasures around Cixi's corpse—jade watermelons, grasshopper cabbage, jade lotuses, coral trees, etc.—and then removed the jewels pressed under Cixi's corpse one by one, and then carried Cixi's body to the coffin lid, grabbed the dragon robe, tore off her underwear, took off her shoes and socks, and searched the jewels around her...
The matter is not over here, and the story of the Night Pearl is not over.
At that time, Sun Dianying was just a small warlord, and his power naturally could not be compared with that of the big warlord, so although he got a lot of treasure, many of them were given to the higher-level officials by him, and this night pearl was also among them. In his opinion, although this pearl was strange in shape and of high quality, it was far less important than his future, and this night pearl thus reached the hands of another person.
The article quotes Sun Dianying as saying:
"She (Cixi) contains a night pearl in her mouth, which is divided into two pieces, and when closed is a round ball, which is transparent and lightless, and when closed, it reveals a green cold light, and the hair can be seen within a hundred steps at night. I heard that this treasure can make the corpse unmelted, no wonder that after Cixi's coffin was split, Lafayette was like sleeping, only to see the wind, his face turned black, and his clothes were a little untouchable. I gave the Pearl of the Night to Yunong to Lady Jiang on my behalf... ..."
According to expert speculation, the Night Pearl buried in the mouth of Empress Dowager Cixi was a rough diamond with an approximately spherical shape weighing about 787.28 carats, and its estimated value of 10.8 million taels of silver in 1908 was equivalent to the current value of 810 million yuan. Later, the bead went to the United States and appeared at an exhibition, but unfortunately we could not bring it back to the country.
Of course, the night pearl in Cixi's mouth can be said to be the largest recorded in history, but in addition, the nine night pearls on the crown of Cixi Phoenix are also priceless treasures.
According to Li Yingfa's "Literature and History", when the Eight-Power Alliance invaded the city of Beijing, Cixi saw that things were not good, so she ordered that the people should not be allowed to do any acts of resistance, during which she wantonly betrayed the country. There is also a very interesting story here, that is, Cixi took four night pearls from her phoenix crown and gave them to foreigners, in exchange for the Eight-Nation Alliance to withdraw from the capital.
However, at this time, there was an accident, that is, Li Lianying, who was doing things by her side, was not next to her, and in desperation, she had to ask a palace girl surnamed Wang to be sent to the Ximen Hotel and handed over to Li Hongzhang. We all know that Li Hongzhang was not idle at this time, he was negotiating with foreigners, and he planned to know how to cut the land and pay compensation to understand this matter, so even Li Hongzhang could not take care of it.
At that time, the palace lady was only 17 years old, and Empress Dowager Cixi warned her to be careful along the way, and if she lost her head, she would fall to the ground. This palace lady saw that the treasure was rich, so she cleverly got rid of the guards and hid the night pearl into the people.
In 1964, a worker in Xi'an found these four night pearls in his home, and the family's surname was Wu. Once, when cleaning and sanitation, the child took apart a dirty oily black pillow to prepare for cleaning, and found that there was a red cloth bag inside, and the red cloth was uncovered and a layer of yellow cloth was uncovered. A layer of oil paper, a layer of cotton paper inside the oil paper, wrapped in four dragon's eye large, crystal shining night pearls, this thing really frightened them.
According to their recollections: it turned out that this dirty pillow was given to them by an eighty-year-old grandmother before she died, this grandmother was childless and childless, and it was the two couples surnamed Wu who sent them to the end of their pension, and when they gave them nothing, they swallowed their breath without saying anything.
Later, these four pearls of the night were donated to the country by the couple.commencing.