In the 1950s, the "Acheng" located in the north of Afang Palace was discovered by local farmers. They excavated mottled tiles, slabs, bricks, stone pillar bases and other architectural remains, which are first-hand evidence of the existence of Afang Palace. On March 4, 1961, after an investigation by experts into the "Front Hall of Afang Palace", the existence of Afang Palace was finally confirmed. At the same time, the site is also listed as one of the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units.
In October 2002, the team of the archaeological team of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences officially began to dig the ruins of the Afang Palace, but unexpectedly, after four years of investigation, archaeologists found that the rammed earth platform was basically destroyed at the site of the No. 1 and No. 2 buildings in Shanglin Garden, and the excavated bricks, floor tiles, cylinder tiles, tiles and other building materials suffered a serious fire here, and then excavated with burned plaster fragments, which proved the experts' view.
However, Shanglin Garden is 1150 meters away from the ruins of the front hall of Afang Palace, and to some extent, this does not belong to the scope of the palace complex, and even if it is burned, it cannot prove that Afang Palace suffered a fire. In addition, if the Afang Palace was really burned by Xiang Yu, then there should be a large amount of grass and wood ash at the scene, but experts investigated an area of 200,000 square meters and found only a few pieces of burnt soil, no grass and wood ash. Therefore, experts concluded that the burning Xiang Yu was actually not Afang Palace, but Qin Xianyang Palace.
In other words, from the existing foundation site of Afang Palace, Afang Palace was actually not built, and the "History" said that when Qin II took the throne, the Afang Palace "did not come to an end", because of the collapse of the First Emperor, the Afang Palace was forced to stop work, and 700,000 laborers were rushed to repair the Qin Tombs, and when the construction began again, the Qin Dynasty was almost extinct, so this palace was not built at all.
In addition, through on-site investigation, combined with historical data and computer technology, the experts simulated the completed Afang Palace, and it can be seen from the restored map that the First Emperor really wanted to build a palace unique in the world. In short, the black cauldron that Xiang Yu carried with him for more than 2,000 years was removed, and he was not the executioner who burned the Afang Palace. Later generations were deceived by Du Mu's "A Fang Gong Fu".