28 10 月 The Bedchamber and the Resting Hall in the Tomb of Qin Shihuangdi
The bedchamber and the resting hall in the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi were built 150 meters north of the earthen mound. The bedchamber was the living place of the soul of the tomb owner, and the resting hall was a place for rest and banquets, equivalent to a temporary rest place. This is based on the ritual of “death is like life”, and the system of imitating the living palace is copied into the mausoleum. The bedchamber was furnished with the tomb owner’s clothes, bed, furniture and daily necessities, just like the appearance of the tomb owner before his death. The palace maids offered food to the tomb owner four times a day, just like serving a living person. This initiative had a profound impact on future generations. During the Han Dynasty, the worship activities of ancestral temples, and garden rituals were more frequent, Hanshu said: “there are dormitories and resting halls in the garden. The daily sacrifice is at the dormitories, the monthly sacrifice is at the temples, and the seasonal sacrifice is at the resting halls.”
The construction of a bedchamber on the side of the tomb began with the tomb of Qin Shi Huang. It evolved from the “hall” or “sacrificial hall” in the Yin and Zhou Dynasties and the spring and autumn and Warring States periods. The role of the sacrificial hall was to serve as a resting place for the soul of the tomb owner and to offer sacrifices to the ancestors. Especially in the era of Qin Shi Huang, the majesty of the emperor was highly respected, which was reflected in the funeral system, and the resting place of the souls imitated the palace where they lived before. Day sacrifices were at bedtime, and the hourly sacrifice was at the resting hall, exactly like serving a living person.
The bedchamber is also known as a dormitory in ancient books. Hanshu said:” from Emperor Gaozu to Emperor Xuan, there were sleeping rooms and resting halls in the garden”.Cai Yong of the Eastern Han Dynasty said in his book Duduan: that ancient emperors had temples and bedchambers in their capitals. The temple is the place where ancestral tablets are placed. There are clothes, sticks and daily necessities in the bedroom and these items are all for sacrifice. Before the Qin Dynasty, sacrifices were not made at the tomb, and important festivals were celebrated by the king leading his ministers at the temple. Qin Shi Huang built a bedchamber beside his tomb, set up clothes and daily necessities, and began the tomb sacrifice from then on.
From 1976-1977, a large group of ritualistic buildings connected east to west was discovered on the northern side of the Qin Shi Huang tomb mound and in the western part of the northern part of the inner city. These are the bedchambers and the resting hall buildings of the Qin Shi Huang tomb. The site is about 750 meters long from north to south and 250 meters wide from east to west, covering an area of 187,500 square meters. It is a large scale, densely built, with flamboyantly decorated houses, walls and floors, and belongs to a large group of buildings. The main part of the second building alone has an area of 64 square meters.
The remaining ruins, it is a group of tall and magnificent buildings. The walls have been rammed and painted with white powder, flat and smooth. The pavement outside the house is paved with rubble, and there are stone steps at the entrance and corridors leading to other houses indoors. The house is very wide, and the wooden purlins on the house are more than 20 cm in diameter. The roof is covered with slate tiles, and then covered with barrel tiles on the tile joints, and the rafters have brightly decorated tiles.
Wadang is a round or semi-circular cover in front of the tube tile, which is used to cover the rafter head to protect it from the erosion of wind and rain on the one hand and make the building look gorgeous and beautiful on the other. Among these tiles, there is a kind of Kui pattern tiles that people call big tiles, with a diameter of 61 cm. What kind of large tiles were used on such a large building? We can thus imagine how majestic the houses were at that time. The diameter of a typical tile is only about ten centimeters, but the diameter of this tile is five times that of a typical tile. What amazing!
This group of buildings was burned by Xiang Yu’s army at the end of the Qin Dynasty, and a large amount of rubble and remains of red-burned earth and ashes are still piled up on the ground. After more than two thousand years of vicissitudes, the remaining ruins and relics have been changing, and the partial ruins have either disappeared or become so fragmented that they cannot be seen in their original appearance.