As we all know, in 1127 AD, after the fall of the Northern Song Dynasty after the jing kang revolution, Zhao Zhuo was proclaimed emperor in Yingtianfu (Shangqiu) in Nanjing, and the history was called the Southern Song Dynasty. Later, because the capital was close to the front line, Jin soldiers often harassed, and Lin'an had been a rich land since the Tang and Song dynasties, so the Southern Song Dynasty moved the capital to Lin'an (present-day Hangzhou). And we all know that the ancient tombs of the Song Dynasty in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, in addition to the vertical pit tombs, are mainly rectangular brick and stone tombs, in addition to gold and silver, porcelain, there will also be pottery figurines buried with the tomb. Today I want to tell you about the discovery of a southern Song Dynasty tomb in Hangzhou, but when the experts saw the epitaph, they scolded the tomb owner for not having a face.
Fast back to November 2013, when several villagers in Langbi Village, Lin'an District, Hangzhou, were building houses on a large mound at the foot of General Mountain, they inadvertently dug out a large black hole, and they could see some green bricks at the entrance of the cave. The villagers immediately reported the matter to the village committee, which suspected that they had dug up the ancient tomb and immediately reported it to the local cultural relics department. The Hangzhou Cultural Relics Bureau immediately sent an archaeological team to the scene, and found that the tomb here was backed by the General Mountain, and there was a small river in front, which can be said to be a treasure of feng shui, and the exploration of the site inferred that there must be a large tomb here. After visiting the villagers, the archaeological team learned that there was an ancient general buried in the General Mountain, but no one knew which one it was.
After obtaining the approval of the higher authorities, the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Cultural Relics immediately organized an archaeological team to carry out rescue excavations, and the archaeological team continued to excavate along the place of the large cave, and found that this large mound was artificially built, and the preliminary judgment was that the tomb was sealed. After excavation, the archaeological team found that the large mound was built from layers of mature soil, and the color of each layer of cooked soil was different, and experts said that this kind of sealing mound was rare in the Jiangnan region and was a typical characteristic of the ancient tombs of the Song and Yuan Dynasties. After the archaeological team cleared the sealed soil, a super-large sacrifice platform appeared, covered with pebbles, and drainage ditches were distributed around the platform, and experts said that the Song and Yuan tombs designed in this way were found for the first time in the Southern Jingnan region.
Later, when the tomb was opened, the experts were a little frustrated, and there were three robbery holes in the wall of the original tomb, and the valuable cultural relics in the tomb had long been looted, and the archaeologists only found dozens of copper coins. But fortunately, the archaeological team found two epitaphs in the burial chamber, and through the recording of the epitaphs, it can be determined that the epitaph is the prefect of Lin'an in the late Southern Song Dynasty, which is a husband and wife burial tomb. However, experts have consulted a large number of Song histories, but there are very few records about this person, and the epitaph unearthed this time can be said to supplement the lack of historical records. The epitaph records: "At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, Hong Qiwei served as the prefect of Zhenjiang, responsible for resisting the Yuan Dynasty army to cross the Yangtze River", and when he went to Zhenjiang to take office, he also wrote a suicide note and posted it in various places in Lin'an Province to indicate coexistence and death with Zhenjiang.
The History of the Song Dynasty records that after the Song Dynasty lost the decisive battle with the Yuan army with all its strength, the prefect of Zhenjiang, as the gateway to Jiangnan, abandoned the city and fled, and in the epitaph, Hong Qiwei also defended his escape from the front, which roughly means that he did not want to surrender and be taken prisoner. After the fall of the Southern Song Dynasty, Hong Qiwei returned to his hometown in Lin'an and lived a reclusive life until his death in 1294. After learning about Hong Qiwei's life deeds, experts directly called the tomb owner not to face, but his tomb has a high historical research value, especially the record of historical events such as the Battle of Ding Jiazhou and the depreciation of Jia Xiangdao in the epitaph, which supplements the historical materials of the controversial Song and Yuan Wars, has a high historical value, and also unveils some historical mysteries for us.