Ep. 370 | The Looting of the Eastern Tombs

**Laszlo Montgomery** (0:01)
Hey, everyone, welcome back. This is Laszlo Montgomery, now starting my 16th year, bringing you all these exciting episodes of The China History Podcast. So, quite a few of you have reached out to me, asking, what's up? I'm so regular for all these years, new episodes every couple of weeks. And now, during the second half of 2025, so stingy with the new material. Well, actually, in between trips to Cambodia, I've been cranking out a lot of new episodes for a new series that's coming to you around Chinese New Year 2026 That'll be February 17th. Wu Zetian's birthday. All of that new stuff has been up on Patreon and CHP Premium. If you're feeling any FOMO, you can consider that nuclear option. This one I have for you today? Well, I'll admit, I completely forgot about it. It came out on Patreon like six months ago in June. I just woke up, someone e-mailed me this morning and was wondering if I'm okay and if I'm still posting CHP episodes. Now, aside from the glaucoma and macular degeneration I just found out about yesterday, I'm doing great. And this forgotten episode will serve as proof of life. It's from six months ago, but as far as I've been able to tell, nothing new has surfaced regarding this story, so it's still green. Back in February, I featured author and master jade carver Andrew Shaw onto the CHP to talk about his book, Spoil, which looked at the history of looted treasures and the stories behind them. This time, I wanted to dig a little deeper into only one of the incidents that Andrew Shaw mentioned. Graves and grave robbing? Eh, go hand in hand. We're familiar with so many stories about these tombs being built and plundered, and in some cases, even the remains of former royals or aristocrats being desecrated. So I feel safe in saying that robbing tombs is nothing new, nor is it exclusive to China. Herodotus, the Sima Qian of Western Sive, when he saw the Great Pyramid of Giza in the 5th century BC, during China's warring states period, that structure had already been picked clean from the gold, the jewels, right down to the casing stones. Since the earliest days, just like I have to always try to find places to hide things so my cats don't get it, royalty had the same problem. The guys who worked for the pharaohs, emperors and kings throughout the millennia always tried in vain to outsmart the grave robbers. Tombs like Mawangdui in Changsha, Sanxingdui in Chengdu, or Tutankhamun in Egypt. There's not many of those that made it through the ages into our modern times unmolested. Those are the exceptions. That's what makes our story today sort of interesting. The eastern tombs, the Qingdongling, everybody knew where they were. They weren't hidden away. And for any foreign tourist, going back to the CTS days in the 1970s and to locals and expats as well, these eastern tombs are old hat and still today remain a well-known sight on the Beijing tourist map. But for everyone else who knows not of their existence or who had never heard of the warlord, Sun Dianying, this one may be of interest to you. The imperial tombs of the emperors were usually found around the ancient capitals of Chang'an and Luoyang. Qin Shi Huang's famous mausoleum with its terracotta warriors is one example. Same goes with the 19 Tang imperial tombs. Tomb raiders have engaged in this trade for as long as nobles and royals have been burying themselves with treasure. Even Cao Cao participated in the pastime with the tomb of Liu Wu, the prince of Liang. His eternal slumber was interrupted on Cao Cao's orders. You know, uniting a nation and conquering one's rivals was a very costly business. There's never been a shortage of people throughout history lacking in human decency who wouldn't think twice about robbing some tomb. According to the record of the Three Kingdoms, Cao Cao had appointed a Mojing Xiaowei, our gold-seeking captain, to lead the efforts of searching for buried treasure to fund his military campaigns. And maybe because of this, Cao Cao himself was very careful and put a lot of thought into the location and construction of his final resting place. You know when they found Cao Cao's tomb? Well, he died in 220 and it took 1,788 years, till December 2008 before they came across it in An Yang, Henan Province. That was also where the Shang oracle bones were unearthed at the ruins of Yin, the Yin Xu. When Cao Cao's tomb was discovered, there was quite a heated debate among scholars concerning the human remains inside this tomb. Many questioned whether or not the primary inhabitant of this tomb was the Cao Cao. Well, I went down that rapid hall and read that the matter was settled in 2018 with most experts agreeing that the discovery was Cao Cao's tomb. Some insist this wasn't the actual final resting place of, well, not only this towering figure in all of Chinese history, but also a biggie from the gaming world, too. Kowei's Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Dynasty Warriors, plus appearances in a bunch of other games. Cao Cao in popular culture? Yeah, he's some serious stuff.