In 1928, Yuling was stolen, and Puyi and his party went to the underground palace to tidy up, and were stunned by the tragic situation in front of them. The underground palace seeped badly, and it was bombarded, and the coffins were scattered and full of rotten white bones. In the distance, a woman dressed in a yellow silk mortuary costume floated towards them with a smile on her face.
Everyone was so frightened that they did not dare to move for a long time. Later, he finally had the courage to reassemble the scattered bones and put together five corpses.
The last to enter Yuling was Qianlong, and before him there were already three imperial concubines, including Empress Yuan, Fucha, as well as Huixian, Zhexi, and Shujia, and a Wei Jia clan who was posthumously named Empress Xiaoyi.
After studying many materials, Puyi and the widows determined that the only smiling female corpse that did not decompose was Jiaqing's biological mother Wei Jia. She was not the first to be buried, nor the latest, but more than 150 years after her death, the body was well preserved, and even wore earrings on her ears, like an old lady who fell asleep.
In recent years, many film and television works have appeared around Qianlong's harem life, and Wei Yingluo in "Yanxi Raiders" and Wei Wanwan in "The Legend of Ruyi" have used the real concubine Wei Jia as the prototype.
Wei Yingluo entered the palace in order to track down the cause of her sister's death, accompanied the Empress Fucha clan for many years, was jealous like hatred, dared to love and hate, and finally became Qianlong's favorite concubine, while Wei Wanwan was a jealous successor Ruyi, a black woman with a belly who did everything she could to give birth, or the culprit who provoked Qianlong and the subsequent relationship.
However, the real Wei Jiashi is far luckier than the characters in film and television dramas.
Wei Jia was originally a Han Chinese, surnamed Wei, and was born in the yellow banner, that is, a slave, and was later carried into the yellow flag and changed his surname to Wei Jia. In 1740, at the age of 13, she entered the palace through the draft and became a palace maid beside Empress Fucha.
At that time, Qianlong and Empress Yuanfucha belonged to a young couple, and the empress was ordered to serve the emperor several times, but none of them entered the emperor's eyes, but Wei Jia was not annoyed, and did not fight or grab calm as water.
After the death of Empress Fucha, Wei Jia finally ushered in her highlight moment. In 1746, Wei Jia was made a nobleman and promoted to concubine in the same year.
"Ling" comes from the "Book of Poetry" "like a show, make Wen Ling Wang", "Ling" has a beautiful meaning, which shows Qianlong's favor for Wei Jia, and in the following years she went all the way from concubine to concubine to concubine.
In addition to the rapid promotion, the number of children born is also beyond the reach of other concubines. In ten years, she gave birth to four sons and two daughters, and during the same period, only the noble concubine Dai Jia gave birth to one child in the Qianlong harem, which can be described as a favored harem.
And Qianlong's evaluation of her is the word "Roujia", which can be described as a beautiful and gentle representative in the harem.
Qianlong loved the Wei Jia clan so much, why didn't the Fucha clan give the Wei Jia clan a title after his death, but he sealed the successor Nala?
In fact, after Fucha's death, Qianlong didn't want to be sealed, and in his mind, except for Fucha, no one was worthy of this empress, but he couldn't stand the pressure on the harem of the former dynasty, especially his own mother Niuhulu.
Qianlong had no choice but to canonize the Ulanara clan, but the relationship between the two has never been very good.
In 1765, during the southern tour, Nara suddenly cut his hair, which completely annoyed Qianlong. After returning to the palace, Nara was sent to the cold palace, and died of depression the following year. In the same year, Wei Jia was canonized as Emperor Ling's concubine, ruling the harem, and her status was equal to that of empress.
After Wei Jia's death, her own son Yan Yan later ascended the throne as emperor and posthumously created her mother Empress Xiaoyi.
Until Yuling was opened in 1928, the incorruptibility of Wei Jia's body for a hundred years attracted attention from all parties.
The ancients have always had the concept of treating death as life, did her descendants make particularly powerful antiseptic measures for her?
The answer is unlikely.
In fact, before the Manchus entered the customs, because they were nomads and had no fixed place to live, in order to facilitate their descendants, their ancestors were usually incinerated with fire after they died. In the early Qing Dynasty, Nur Hachi, Huang Taiji, and Shunzhi were all cremated, and later influenced by the Han culture of the Central Plains, it was not until the Kangxi Dynasty that they began to abandon cremation and change it to burial.
On the other hand, it is also related to the belief of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, although they agree with the burial customs of the Han people, in fact, they still believe that the body after death is not important, as long as the soul is preserved is enough, so the Qing Dynasty did not pay so much attention to the embalming of the body of the empress.
At that time, the buried Qianlong was rotten and only a pile of white bones remained, which shows that there is really no very powerful anti-embalming technology.
So is it Wei Jia's own problem?
One of the widely circulated theories is that researchers found a large amount of cinnabar in Wei Jia's bones, and believed that she was poisoned during her lifetime, and that Qianlong himself was poisoned.
According to historical records, Wei Jiashi fell ill after returning from Rehe with Qianlong, and it took about a year from illness to death, during which time Qianlong also visited him. If you want to say that Qianlong was poisoned, it is not very likely, after all, it is difficult for a person to be chronically poisoned for more than a year before finally dying.
In addition, when Yan Yan was secretly left the storage, Wei Jia's was almost 50, which did not meet the situation of "son and mother strong", and Qianlong did not need to poison him.
There is also a saying that the drugs taken by Wei Jiashi before his death have some ingredients that can inhibit the growth of microorganisms, and after long-term use, they gradually play a role in preservative.
Others said that Wei Jiashi had been seriously ill before his death and had not eaten for a long time, and there was no food left in his body, so it also slowed down the decay.
In 1928, after Puyi reburied Wei Jia's body, it may have been exposed to air or changed the preservation environment, and soon after, Wei Jiashi also quickly decayed into a pile of bones.
To this day, no authority claims to have deciphered the mystery of Wei Jia's incorruptibility for more than a hundred years, and archaeological experts are still waiting for new evidence to appear.
Wei Jia was 49 years old when she died, and like the successor Nara, I don't know if it was fate or coincidence, but in any case, she was far luckier than Nara, Wei Jia was favored during her lifetime, and she also enjoyed enough sorrow after death, which is indeed a rare time for an ancient woman who has never had the right to choose.
What do you think about that?
Reference: "The Thirteen Emperors of the Great Qing Dynasty" and "The Front and Side of the Harem of the Great Qing Dynasty" #延禧攻略#
