Empire in Exile: Rediscovering Southern Song Burials

Today, we’ll talk about one of the most intriguing archaeological discoveries in recent Chinese history – the long-lost imperial tombs of the Southern Song dynasty, hidden for centuries beneath quiet tea fields in Zhejiang Province.

Transcript

Empire in Exile: Rediscovering Southern Song Burials

Today, we’ll talk about one of the most intriguing archaeological discoveries in recent Chinese history – the long-lost imperial tombs of the Southern Song dynasty, hidden for centuries beneath quiet tea fields in Zhejiang Province.

Every year in early summer, the wheat fields of Gongyi in central China’s Henan Province form a scene that feels almost cinematic. Towering stone statues from the Northern Song imperial tombs rise from the golden grain, their ancient faces watching peacefully over farmers who rest in their shade. These monuments, visible and familiar, have become part of daily rural life. Far to the south, however, outside the historic city of Shaoxing in Zhejiang Province, lies a landscape that hides its past entirely. 

There are no statues, no mounds, and no ancient walls – only dense, orderly rows of tea plants climbing the hillsides. Beneath this ordinary agricultural scene lies the burial ground of the Southern Song emperors, a dynasty that existed in exile, ruled in uncertainty, and built its tombs not as eternal palaces but as temporary shelters for remains that were meant to be moved north one day. That day never came.

In August 2025, archaeologists uncovered something extraordinary under these tea fields: massive stone slabs, part of a long-lost imperial burial chamber. The discovery of this newly found tomb – now known only as Tomb No. 7 – was the latest breakthrough in a decade-long effort to map and understand the Southern Song necropolis. It was a discovery that illuminated not just a burial site, but a chapter of Chinese history defined by loss, displacement, and adaptation.

The find itself was almost accidental. Earlier that April, during routine fieldwork, an archaeologist felt a sudden resistance as his trowel struck something hard just seventy centimeters below the surface. That hard edge turned out to be the corner of a stone-built repository, the hallmark of Southern Song imperial burials. Over the next several months, the team revealed three sides of the structure, confirming the presence of another tomb long erased from memory. Unlike the imposing burial mounds of earlier dynasties, these Southern Song tombs lack any visible surface features. They were never meant to dominate the landscape. Built quickly and simply, they reflected the precarious world of a dynasty born in flight.

This modesty was rooted in a traumatic moment in Chinese history. In 1127, the Jurchen Jin forces invaded Kaifeng, the Northern Song capital. They carried off the emperor, his heir, most of the royal family, and countless officials in what became known as the Jingkang Incident. Among the few survivors who escaped capture was Zhao Gou, the ninth son of Emperor Huizong. Later that year, Zhao Gou ascended the throne as Emperor Gaozong and began a desperate journey southward, pursued by Jin armies. For years, he ruled on the move, changing cities repeatedly, unable to establish a stable capital until he finally settled in Lin’an – modern-day Hangzhou in Zhejiang Province. This wandering court had no means, nor the psychological inclination, to build grand permanent tombs.

Gaozong’s foster mother, the Empress Dowager Longyu, died shortly after the dynasty’s flight, but before she passed, she left instructions that her burial should be temporary and simple, so her remains could be transferred north once the homeland was recovered. Her request soon became a guiding principle for the entire dynasty. The coffins of Emperor Huizong and his wife – returned from captivity only after the Northern and Southern Song had negotiated peace – were likewise interred near Longyu’s resting place. In time, this area in Shaoxing became the main burial ground for the Southern Song – an improvised necropolis for a dynasty that never stopped longing for and genuinely anticipating its restoration in the north.

Yet history moved in a different direction. The Southern Song endured for 152 years until the Mongol conquest of 1279 ended the dynasty once and for all. The hoped-for return never happened. The “temporary” tombs became permanent by necessity, and the Southern Song emperors remained in Shaoxing forever. Over the centuries, their burial site was gradually forgotten, altered, looted, repurposed, and generally absorbed into the local landscape. By the time modern archaeologists arrived, even local residents barely knew what lay beneath their tea fields.

When archaeological work officially began in 2012, the team confronted an enormous challenge: namely, there was nothing left to see on the surface. Historical records suggested that fourteen tombs – seven emperors and seven empresses – should be lying in the area. But no tomb mounds survived, no ritual avenues remained intact, and even the location markers built in modern times were imprecise. Early residents pointed to spots where they remembered seeing carved stones or mounds decades earlier, but when archaeologists searched, the memories seldom matched the soil. Slowly, through patient surveying and probing, the team began to detect underground anomalies: a buried wall segment here, a stone foundation there. And painstakingly, over time, the story of the Southern Song tombs began to reemerge.

In 2018, the project entered its excavation phase. Over the next years, six tombs were identified in the southern area, followed by the major 2025 discovery in the northern area. But the archaeologists faced another constraint: they were not allowed to open the burial chambers themselves. 

Imperial tombs in China are protected with extreme caution. Instead, the work focuses on documenting architectural features – entrance platforms, perimeter walls, ceremonial halls, and covered walkways – that once created a full ritual landscape around each tomb. These structures reveal how the Southern Song adapted the traditions of their Northern ancestors to a new environment and changed political circumstances.

The layout of the tombs reflects both practical necessity and evolving cultural identity. Early Southern Song tombs followed the burial principles inherited from the Northern Song, including the so-called “Five Tones Theory,” which linked a family’s surname to cardinal directions and ideal terrain. But as the burial ground filled up and southern officials who preferred different geomantic traditions gained influence, the later tombs began to reflect more local southern Chinese fengshui ideas. Tomb No. 7, for example, contains architectural features not found in the earlier tombs – such as extended foundation platforms that likely supported timber corridors. This increased complexity suggests a shift in the court’s priorities, perhaps signaling growing confidence or changing ritual preferences in the later years of the dynasty.

Yet for all their symbolic significance, the Southern Song tombs were always modest compared with the monumental necropolises of other Chinese dynasties. And their modesty did not spare them from extraordinary destruction. After the Mongol conquest, a Tibetan lama named Yang Lianzhenjia, appointed as the head of Buddhist affairs in the south, led a devastating looting campaign that targeted the tombs directly. According to historical accounts, his group pried open burial chambers, stole valuables, desecrated remains, and even removed Emperor Lizong’s skull to repurpose it as a ritual vessel. Later steles recount how the Ming Dynasty found Lizong’s skull in the ruins of the Yuan capital and returned it to Shaoxing for reburial.

The damage continued long after medieval times. 

In the twentieth century, the burial area was used variously as farmland, a tea plantation, a labor camp, a poultry yard, and a school. As mechanical farming equipment became commonly used in the area, it tore through underground structures. Ritual halls, mounds, and stone platforms that had survived into the early Republican period were destroyed. The Southern Song tombs became, in the words of one scholar, perhaps “the most thoroughly devastated imperial tombs in Chinese history.”

And yet, through all this loss, archaeology has given the site a new life. For centuries, scholars relied entirely on texts to imagine the Southern Song burial system. The most detailed record, a construction document from Emperor Gaozong’s tomb, had been studied repeatedly but never verified through physical evidence. The new excavations have made it possible to reconstruct the burial landscape with accuracy, revealing how the dynasty balanced tradition with improvisation in an era of displacement.

In 2021, recognizing its significance, China included the Southern Song tombs in the national archaeological heritage park program, marking a new phase of protection and research. Excavations are expected to slow as the overall layout becomes clear, but targeted studies will continue. One major question remains unresolved: which emperor or empress lies in each tomb? None of the seven discovered tombs can yet be confidently identified. The moment even one tomb yields a name – through an inscription, funerary document, or distinctive layout – the rest may be matched through historical descriptions of their relative positions.

For now, the tombs bear only numbers.

In the end, what lies beneath the tea fields of Shaoxing is more than stone and earth. It is the buried memory of a dynasty that ruled in exile, dreamed of return, and shaped a distinct cultural identity in the face of uncertainty. Emperor Gaozong fled through war-torn landscapes; poets like Lu You looked north with longing; ministers argued over burial customs; and the emperors themselves hoped their remains would one day be carried home. Instead, they stayed where they were laid, waiting in silence beneath the tea roots.

Today, archaeology is giving them a voice again. The fallen roofs, broken foundations, scattered tiles, and carved stones are slowly revealing their stories. When the day finally comes that one of the tombs yields decisive evidence of identity, the emperors and empresses of the Southern Song will emerge from anonymity. Their names, erased by war and time, will be restored. And a dynasty that lived for so long between loss and hope will once again take its place in history – no longer forgotten beneath the tea fields, but remembered in full.

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 Ni Wei, translator Wang Yuyan, 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.