There are legends of various treasures everywhere in ancient and modern China and abroad, most of which are randomly built, and only one place is certain, and there are rare treasures that are rich and invincible, that is, the imperial tomb. The most important thing for every emperor in China at the beginning of his reign was to build a mausoleum for himself after death, and in order to be able to enjoy the glory and wealth of his life after death, he hated not being able to bring all the treasures of the country into the coffin. Only a very small number of emperors who saw through the red dust did not have any attachment to this, but because the ritual law had mandatory mausoleum specifications, even the poorest emperor would have an unusually magnificent mausoleum.
In fact, mausoleum and tomb are two concepts, the mausoleum is the place of worship, the tomb is the burial place, some imperial tombs are together, and some are far away. Although most of the emperor's tombs are extremely secretive, but the tombs can basically be found in the history books or rumors, it is precisely because of the large number of treasures in the imperial tombs, whenever there is war, it will cause many people to covet, there are civil tomb robbers, there are also official rebels. Before the Tang Dynasty, there was not a single imperial tomb that had not been invaded, including the famous Mausoleum of the First Emperor of Qin.
In fact, before the Qin Shi Huang Mausoleum was completed, it was looted by the peasant rebel army and destroyed in a big way. Later, after Han Gaozu Liu Bang settled the world, he repaired it again, and not many years later, he was destroyed by the Chimei Army, and then for more than two thousand years, it was destroyed and repaired, and it was very difficult to leave the Terracotta Warriors and the Underground Palace today. This is also thanks to qin shi huang recruiting hundreds of thousands of people and spending decades to build so strong. Other emperors generally did not have this kind of boldness and strength, so the imperial tombs that were repaired could not last for several years, such as the Changling of Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao, did not last for two hundred years, and the rebel army was wiped out.
In fact, strictly speaking, China is still well preserved to this day, and there are only four imperial tombs that have not been destroyed, namely the Three Tombs outside the Qingguan, the Ming Xiao Mausoleum, the Ming Thirteen Tombs and the Tang Qian Tombs. The tombs of more than 400 other Chinese emperors invariably destroyed or excavated, most of them without even having a single site left. It is reasonable to say that in ancient times, filial piety ruled the world, and the criminal laws of successive dynasties listed digging graves as the number one crime, stealing the tombs of ordinary civilians, and immediately being beheaded, let alone the emperor's mausoleum. Moreover, the fortification of the imperial tomb is by no means something that ordinary tomb robbers can cope with, so it is generally an official army or a huge rebel army, which takes months or even years to use violent means such as gunpowder explosion to open the dungeon and plunder the treasure.
And why can these four imperial tombs be preserved intact? First of all, let's talk about the imperial tombs of the Qing Dynasty, the fall of the Qing Dynasty is only a hundred years ago, only one or two decades after the abdication of the Xuantong Emperor, the two major tomb groups of the Qing Dongling Tomb and the Qing Xi Mausoleum have been stolen and excavated, and they are all committed by the officials and troops. In particular, the Qing Tombs were the most serious, especially the Yuling Tombs in Qianlong and the Dingdong tombs in Cixi, the two imperial tombs that took the longest time and consumed the most silver, were almost completely destroyed. The QingXi Mausoleum was also damaged to varying degrees, and the coffins of the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Longyu were also destroyed.
The Three Tombs, which are far away from the Guan, have been fortunately preserved, mainly because the northeast region has been relatively stable. Although the Qing Dynasty was destroyed, the northeast was the land of Manchurians, and the locals would not allow the excavation of the imperial tomb. Later, the warlord Zhang Zuolin occupied the northeast, and the old Zhang family was never short of money, and there was no need to rely on digging up imperial tombs to pay the army. After that, there is the puppet state of Manchukuo, although Puyi is a puppet emperor, but the Japanese do not dare to openly dig up the graves of other people's ancestors.
The Ming Dynasty is the only dynasty in China where all imperial tombs can be preserved, which is indeed a miracle in the world. The Ming Emperor's mausoleum was divided into two groups, one was Zhu Yuanzhang and his old man staying in Nanjing by himself, and the rest ran to the vicinity of Beijing. Zhu Yuanzhang's Ming Xiao Mausoleum is not far from the city of Nanjing, and the Ming and Qing dynasties have been guarded by officials and troops for more than four hundred years, whether it is a rebel army or a tomb robber, no one dares to attack him. Only a very few periods such as the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom had people who wanted to use their brains, but the Ming Tomb was built by the Hongwu Emperor in nearly thirty years, mobilizing a large number of people, and the solidity and secrecy of its underground palace were rarely reached in the entire history, and if there were no tens of thousands of troops using artillery, they would not want to enter the underground palace.
The most cattle imperial tomb in China is the Qianling Tomb of the Tang Dynasty, which houses Li Zhi and Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty, who came to power during the most powerful period in Chinese history. The earth-shattering boldness of the Tang Dynasty, the crown of the two thousand years of imperial power, has such strength, people do not consider any hidden and tomb keepers at all. Simply choose a big mountain, hollow out the belly, build it inside, and the location of the imperial tomb is placed here, but no one has been able to move him for more than a thousand years. Qianling can be said to be the strongest imperial tomb in China, there is no one, the people responsible for the site selection are the famous Yuan Tiangang and Li Chunfeng, and the construction of the mausoleum is modeled on the specifications of Chang'an City. The hidden treasures are immeasurable, and personal estimates should be more than the sum of all the treasures in the Ming Emperor's Mausoleum, and even the two national treasures of the Orchid Pavilion Collection and the Chuanguo Jade Seal may be in it.
Qianling was built on the mountain, it will not be affected by earthquakes and floods, and it will not collapse like the Yongling Tomb of the Jiajing Emperor, and it is even more difficult to ascend to the heavens if you want to rob the tomb. At the end of the Tang Dynasty, the world was in chaos, and Huang Chao mobilized hundreds of thousands of troops to dig more than forty meters deep without finding the entrance to the underground palace. Later, countless officials and soldiers flocked to the tomb robbers, and no one could succeed for more than a thousand years, and all of them returned home. In the Republic of China period, Sun Lianzhong bombarded with artillery, and did not find the slightest trace of the underground palace, which shows the solidity of the Qianling Tomb. Later, New China decided to vigorously preserve the integrity of the Qianling Tomb, and to leave it for future generations to excavate and study, and when the underground palace is opened one day, the contents of the underground palace are believed to be shocked by the whole world.