Jade Burial Suits: Dreams for Eternity

Everyone knows “You can’t take it with you,” but that doesn’t keep some people from trying as we’ll learn in today’s podcast that talks about insanely expensive jade burial suits that were sewn with gold thread and found in the largest royal tombs excavated so far from early imperial China over two thousand years ago.

There’s an old Chinese saying that translates as “Wearing jade can bring good luck and avoid bad luck”, so it’s little wonder that jade has come to occupy a large share of China’s jewelry market over the years. According to the 2021 China Jewelry Industry Development Report released by Gems & Jewelry Trade Association of China, all categories of Chinese jewelry and jade products showed an increasing trend in 2021. 

Among them, the scale of the gold market was about 420 billion yuan, that’s almost US$60.6 billion, accounting for 58.3 percent. Coming in second was diamond products with a market size of about 100 billion yuan, about US$14.4 billion, accounting for 13.9 percent. And rounding out the top three – you guessed it – jade products with a market share basically the same as that of diamond products. 

Demand for jade products has been on the rise in recent years, and industry analysts believe it will surpass that of diamond products in 2022, though the official stats haven’t been released yet.

Chinese people’s fondness for jade dates back to ancient times and many men of letters even hold the smooth semi-precious stone in higher esteem than gold. A well-known Chinese proverb says: “Better to be a shard of jade than a whole tile”, which means it’s better to die in glory than live in dishonor. Jade has played an important ceremonial role throughout Chinese history, and the high esteem for jade reached its climax in the form of jade burial suits – using mostly rectangular pieces tied together with wire to preserve the remains of royal members of the Han Dynasty, lasting from 206 BCE to 220 CE. To this day, there have been only around 20 jade burial suits discovered in China, and many of them came to light quite by accident.

In May of 1968, an engineering regiment of the People’s Liberation Army was digging a tunnel into the rocky Lingshan Mountain, about 1.5 kilometers southwest of Mancheng County in north China’s Hebei Province. After some blasting at the site, one soldier had gone missing. His comrades carefully searched the surroundings and finally found him in a cave.

To everyone’s astonishment, the cave was not only gigantic – at 52 meters long, 38 meters wide and 6.8 meters high – but it also turned out to be a treasure trove containing thousands of ancient bronze wares, jade objects, and pottery, among other artifacts distributed in various chambers. Naturally, the regiment’s commander reported their discovery to the provincial bureau of cultural relics.

From the inscriptions on the bronze wares, experts from the bureau recognized that the tomb belonged to a king of the Zhongshan State. But there had been two Zhongshan States in Chinese history. So, the question remained, which state and which king did the inscriptions refer to?

One Zhongshan State was founded by a chieftain of the White Di nomadic tribes in central Hebei Province during the Warring States period, existing from 414 BCE to 296 BCE. The other was the fiefdom of the Zhongshan King during the Western Han Dynasty, existing from 154 BCE to 9 CE. The characters of the former were seal script, while those of the latter were official script. And since the inscriptions on these bronze wares were in official script, the tomb must have belonged to the Zhongshan State of the Western Han Dynasty.

Up to this point, no one could have known that the engineering accident would lead to one of China’s top 10 archaeological discoveries of the 20th century and rocked the world of archaeology.

The tomb has an entrance passage, two side chambers for storage, a large central area, and a rear chamber in which a single coffin was placed. Moreover, it seemed to be a rare case that a Han tomb had stood undisturbed from tomb raiders.

The Han Dynasty represents the first golden era of development in Chinese history, achieving profound economic prosperity, cultural influence, technological advancement, and military might. The Han royals built lavishly furnished tombs to preserve and enjoy earthly pleasures in the afterlife. So naturally, such sites are targeted by tomb raiders for their highly coveted and immensely valuable trophies.

The tomb of the Zhongshan King was able to remain largely intact due to the way it was built – that is, hollowed out of a mountainside rather than a mound covering an underground pit. As such, it has the vast mountain range as natural cover and is difficult to be discovered. 

The discovery of such a rare Han tomb would make headlines for sure. But whether to excavate it or not became a hard choice. Remember, the discovery took place in the year 1968, the high tide of the Cultural Revolution, when massive campaigns were carried out to tear down what was called the “four olds” – old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. The ancient objects excavated were certainly among, if not representative of, the “four olds”.

Out of regard for its rarity and sensitivity, the issue was elevated to then Premier Zhou Enlai, who, after careful consideration, finally entrusted the matter to Guo Moruo. Guo was an acclaimed playwright, poet, historian, and archaeologist of the 20th century and also served as head of the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 1949 till his death in 1978. Guo decided to send experts from the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences to join the Hebei Provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics and the PLA soldiers to secretly excavate the site.

The excavation lasted for about half a year, during which time tens of thousands of relics were unearthed. The clue to determining the owner of the tomb was found in the inscription on one of the bronze wares. The inscription read “34th year”. Despite the absence of the title of the king’s reign, historical records indicate that only one among the 10 generations of Zhongshan kings had remained in power for more than 30 years. It is Liu Sheng, son of Western Han’s 6th Emperor Jing. He became the first king of the Zhongshan State in 154 BCE and ruled the state until his death in 113 BCE.

Liu Sheng was known to have indulged in alcohol and women and is said to have had some 120 sons. The countless drinking vessels and drinking game coins found in the tomb bore witness to his lavish lifestyle. One of his famous descendants is Liu Bei, founder of the Shu-Han State, one of the three kingdoms into which China was divided at the end of the Han Dynasty.

Among the various tomb treasures, one of the most stunning finds was Liu Sheng’s elaborate jade burial suit. The 188cm-long jade suit is assembled from thousands of pieces of jade sewn together with gold thread.

Also known as the “jade casket” or “jade case”, jade burial suits were used as garments for deceased emperors and nobles, tailored to their shape and stitched together according to their class. Emperors and top-class nobles and officials wore garments sewn with gold thread. Kings and princess wore ones with silver thread, while other officials and nobles had ones sewn with copper thread.

Such a luxurious design comes from the ancient belief that jade could absorb the essence of mountains and had the power to keep the body from decaying. Jade burial suits appeared in written records as early as the Western Zhou Dynasty about 3,000 years ago. But for thousands of years, there had been no proof of their existence, until the discovery of the one made for Liu Sheng.

A complete suit consists of six parts – a head covering, upper clothes, sleeves, gloves, trousers, and shoes. Each part is made by various shapes of jade pieces, and each piece is elaborately designed and polished. Small holes are drilled near the corners of each piece, through which the pieces can be “woven” into a suit using fine gold, silver, or copper threads.

The jade suit for Liu Sheng was made to measure, with altogether 2,498 pieces of jade and 1,100 grams of gold thread. The head covering is carved with holes in the form of eyes, nose and mouth. The suit is broader in the chest and back, and bulging in the hips, completely fitted to the body. All body openings were closed, including the eyes, the nose, the reproductive organ, and the anus. The mouth is closed with a jade cicada and the anus a jade pig, both auspicious omens. The cicada implies someone emerging from underground and achieving rebirth, and the pig represents being well served with food and clothes.

It goes without saying, the making of such a suit is no easy task. Archaeologists believe that the ancient craftsmen designed the suit on a wooden manikin. Lines were drawn on the manikin to divide the sections. Then the jade was cut into different shapes and sizes to fit each body part. The gold threads were generally 4 to 5 centimeters long, and the thinnest ones were no thicker than a human hair.

It's estimated that to fashion Liu Sheng’s jade casket would have taken a single skilled craftsman over 10 years to complete, although it’s more likely that several craftsmen were dedicated to the task at a cost equal to the total property of 100 middle-class families in the Han Dynasty. Partly because they are so extremely expensive and labor intensive to make, the pragmatic Emperor Wen of the Wei State of the Three Kingdoms period imposed a ban on the production and use of such suits around 200 CE.

And that was a smart choice considering their false advertising as the costly jade burial suit miserably failed to realize the hope of eternal preservation for its owner as only a small amount of bone ash remained inside when the suit was finally discovered.

According to the Han tradition of couples being buried together, Guo Moruo assumed the tomb of Liu Sheng’s wife, Queen Dou Wan, should be somewhere nearby. He pointed to a hill of similar shape about 100 meters away, and sure enough, Dou Wan’s tomb was there waiting to be discovered. Her tomb was even more spacious than her husband’s and a second jade burial suit was found there. It was made of 2,160 pieces of jade stitched together with more than 600 grams of gold thread.

The two jade burial suits are now collected at the Hebei Museum. They are the earliest and finest ones among over 20 relatively complete jade burial suits that have been discovered in China so far.

Widely acknowledged as the largest, highest-ranking, and best-preserved royal tombs of early imperial China excavated thus far, the tombs of Liu Sheng and Dou Wan boast many national treasures in addition to the jade burial suits such as the famed Changxin Palace lantern and Boshan incense burner. 

These artifacts not only reflect the excellence of ancient Chinese craftsmanship, but also allow modern people to ponder the religious beliefs, social implications, and political agendas of early imperial Chinese rulers.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Lü Weitao, translator Yang Guang, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.