When it comes to the excavation of the tomb of the Wanli Emperor, we must first talk about one person, and this person is the historian Guo Moruo.
If Guo Moruo is a writer and historian who is particularly dedicated to the study of cultural relics, the thing he regrets most is that during the war of aggression against China, too many treasures in the ancient Chinese imperial tombs were lost abroad. Therefore, before his death, he was very active in promoting the excavation of ancient imperial tombs, and it was one of his life goals to dig out the tombs of the great emperors of China and take a look.
The three mausoleums that Guo Moruo most wanted to dig in this life were the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, whose mausoleum project was huge, that is, it would cost 60 billion yuan to remove the mountain above; the second was Qianling, Wu Zetian's mausoleum In the history of so many tomb robbers, guo Moruo did not have much confidence in it. The third is the mausoleum of the Yongle Emperor of the Ming Dynasty, and it seems that it is relatively simple to think that only the Yongle Emperor is still relatively simple.
In 1955, Guo Moruo finally put his dream into action, and he found a group of like-minded historians. Plans began to excavate Zhu Di's mausoleum. However, the excavation technology and preservation technology at that time were not good, and many people objected to the project he proposed. However, Guo Moruo was not dead hearted, and continued to ask his superiors for instructions.
Guo Moruo came out of the study of history and culture, and secondly, he regretted the loss of cultural relics. Speaking of which, the state agreed. Guo Moruo rushed to dig Zhu Di's mausoleum with great interest, but the excavation work was much more difficult than he imagined, and there was no progress after much effort. So he changed his goal and went to dig the tomb of the Wanli Emperor.
The tombs of the Wanli Emperor and Zhu Di are similar in general structure, but they are smaller in scale. The Wanli Emperor probably did not think that he was so unlucky, his graves were dug as guinea pigs, and the grave diggers just wanted to accumulate experience to dig Zhu Di's mausoleum.
The excavation of the wanli emperor's mausoleum was not well prepared, and at the time of excavation, there had been a collapse phenomenon, which destroyed a lot of cultural relics inside. The most regrettable thing is that those funerary products, although they did not fall into the hands of foreigners, but the cultural relics preservation technology at that time had not yet reached the point where so many kinds of funerary products could be completely preserved. Many national treasure-level cultural relics have been oxidized due to improper preservation. For example, the dragon robes and phoenix robes of the emperor and empress eventually became the broken appearance we see now, not to mention the books and calligraphy and paintings.
In the later special period, neither the wanli emperor nor his empress's bones escaped the fate of being criticized. Many of the remaining artifacts in the mausoleum have been damaged to varying degrees, and many of the artifacts we see today are just fakes that were later imitated to reproduce the scene in the mausoleum.
The excavation of the imperial tombs of the Ming Dynasty has become the heaviest lesson in the history of mainland archaeology, and since then, the mainland has been cautious about the excavation of the imperial tombs, and has never taken the initiative to excavate the imperial tombs, basically after the rescue excavation after the theft of excavations.
After this incident, Guo Moruo had not completely absorbed the lesson, and still continued to propose to his superiors to excavate Wu Zetian's mausoleum. It's just that the actual conditions are here, and the higher authorities will never agree to such a request again. Premier Zhou Enlai issued instructions that all imperial tombs from now on were forbidden to be excavated voluntarily, unless they were of a rescue nature.