Located on the Baoshan Gangdi in Wangchang Village, Shilipu Town, Jingmen City, Hubei Province, there are many ancient ruins. There are not only ancient tombs from the Western Han Dynasty, but also the Warring States Chu tombs. As early as 1956, the Hubei Provincial People's Committee announced the Jingmen Shilipu Ancient Tomb Group as the first batch of provincial-level cultural relics protection units.
Baoshan Gangdi is 600 meters long from north to south, about 200 meters wide from east to west, and 2 to 6 meters above the surrounding ground. It is more open in the middle and slightly lower in the surrounding hills than the surrounding hills. There are five mounds distributed from south to north, the larger one is slightly easterly, and the smaller one is slightly westerly. Here, 9 ancient tombs have been found. Among them, the most famous is the Baoshan Otsuka known as the "Encyclopedia of the Chu Kingdom".
On February 28, 1986, the construction of the Jingsha Railway began. In order to complete the project with quality and quantity, the construction team rushed to work in a hurry. One day in November, workers found a coffin while working in Wangchang Village. Since there have been previous discoveries of ancient tombs here, the workers feel that it is likely to be an ancient tomb as well. In order not to destroy the cultural relics, the workers reported the news to the leaders of the construction team, who in turn reported the matter to the local museum.
Experts rushed to the tomb to carry out rescue excavations. At that time, because the excavation equipment was not advanced enough, and the cultural relics could not be destroyed, the experts could only work carefully, so the process was very slow. After the locals heard that there was an ancient tomb here, there was no other entertainment in their spare time, so they ran to the scene to watch the experts work. Every day, the number of people who come to Baoshan Gangdi to watch is close to 20,000.
After three months of hard work by experts, the excavation of Baoshan Otsuka was finally completed, and more than 3,000 cultural relics were unearthed. Tomb No. 2 is the highest in size and the largest in scale. The tomb shape system is well preserved, and the rafters, four-story coffins and burial objects all appear in their original appearance, which is relatively rare in the archaeology of the Chu culture over the years. The tomb unearthed more than 1,000 artifacts, including more than 280 bamboo tablets with a total of more than 15,000 characters. Its content is quite extensive, and it is of great significance to the study of Chu culture, so it is called the Encyclopedia of Chu State.
So, such a luxurious tomb, who is the owner of the tomb? According to the text on the bamboo and the history books, the experts learned the identity of the owner of the ancient tomb. It turned out that the owner of this ancient tomb was Zhaotuo, a member of the Chu royal family, who was the number three person in the Chu Kingdom, no wonder his tomb was so luxurious!