Secrets of the Tang Dynasty Tombs - Unveiling China's Golden Age

Close to the city of Xi'an in north-western China lies a vast and ancient mausoleum, the burial ground of the mighty Tang Dynasty. The Tang Dynasty must have been one of the most powerful empires in the world. The Tang Dynasty lasted for more than 300 years and when Chinese look back, they consider this period as one of the most powerful dynasties in their history. It was here in 1960 that a team of Chinese archaeologists made an extraordinary discovery. As soon as you discover a tomb or some other remains that are able to corroborate texts, that makes archaeologists, epigraphers and researchers in China incredibly excited. They opened one of the smaller tombs. It belonged to a young princess who had lived more than 1,200 years before. What they found inside astonished them. It's one of the largest Tang Dynasties to discover so far. They're very important archaeological discoveries, vital to our understanding of both life and afterlife in the Tang Dynasty. It was a treasure trove, but not one of silver or gold. The treasure was on the walls. The first section of the mural painting depicts the official guardian guarding the tomb. And the second part of the tomb is about her personal life. And the last section of the mural painting, that is where the coffin was found. It has a creation of an afterlife by giving her the spaces that would be appropriate for her. An amazing find. In those chambers of death, they found life. The Terracotta Army, one of the wonders of ancient China. Thousands of warriors, horses, acrobats and musicians, all buried in the earth to accompany the first emperor of China into the afterlife. It was discovered by accident in 1974. The Terracotta Army has since become a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most popular tourist destinations in modern China. But just 60 miles away, lies another burial ground of China's imperial past and another wonder. The murals discovered in the tombs of Zhenling Mausoleum offer an unprecedented glimpse into the life during the Tang Dynasty. A golden age in Chinese history when they ruled an empire larger than that of Rome. The Great Dynasty began in the year 618. The last emperor had been assassinated. China was engulfed in civil war, but from the chaos, a new ruling family arose. It really started with the Li family seizing power from the declining Sui Dynasty. China has suffered from almost 500 years of civil war. So soon after the Tang Dynasty unified China again, it developed fast in economic and then culturally. The ruling family of the Tang Dynasty, the Li family, they were a Turkic-speaking aristocratic family from the northwestern regions of China. The new dynasty would rule China for almost three centuries. It was an era of progress and stability. Art and literature blossomed, as did science and technology, and the Tang capital, Xi'an, became the greatest city on the planet. Today, the modern metropolis of Xi'an is built on the site. Few remnants of the Tang capital remain. But the Great Wild Goose Pagoda in the south of the city is one. Dating to the mid-7th century, it offers a hint of Xi'an's lost grandeur. The original Tang capital would have been completely flattened at the end of the dynasty. You wander around the city walls today, you can still get a feel, get a sense of this amazing city. The Tang capital had dozens of huge and well-sponsored temples. Some of the towers and pagodas being constructed would have been up to 60 or 70 metres high. You know, that's an amazing landmark on a skyline. Xi'an being the capital of the whole planet, it gathered a lot of merchants and religious people, and even visitors from all over the world. Its name meant perpetual peace. But Xi'an was the centre of a vast empire. The Tang's influence stretched into modern Vietnam and Korea in the east, and into Afghanistan in the west. At the empire's zenith, more than 50 million people lived under Tang rule. The emperors commanded armies of 500,000 professional troops. But Tang dominance in Central Asia was not unchallenged. Rebellions and incursions were a constant threat. And to the west lay an even greater enemy, the mighty Tibetan Empire. For centuries, the two powers jostled for dominance. At times, they would settle their differences through diplomacy and intermarriage. But at other times, only a military solution would do. There would be cycles of invasion and occupation, counter-attack and rebellion. Control of trade routes was fiercely contested as well. For mighty though the Tang armies were, the triumph of the dynasty was built on the flow of goods, on the movement of people and the exchange of ideas. Don't forget that the ruling family of the Tang dynasty, even within their DNA and their cultural history, had these strong ties to nomadic people. And that carried on in the way that the Tang dynasty itself was structured. These connections and the signs of these connections became part of Tang dynasty kingship. So for example, receiving ambassadors, receiving traders from foreign countries became one way for the Tang dynasty to, as it were, reflect on itself. Culture, commerce, ideas, technology, almost every aspect of life in Tang dynasty China was connected with a broader regional cultural economy. Well, the Tang dynasty acquired all these new material forms and crafts, for example, glass, gold and silver, and also new religions like Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism. People, luxuries, goods, all kinds of things were coming in and out constantly. The Tang established sea routes to Persia, to Egypt, to Mesopotamia and beyond. But it was by land the greatest treasures flowed along a legendary trade route to the west, the Silk Road. The Zhenling Mausoleum in northwestern China is a window into another time. Of the 19 tombs in the complex, only those of Princess Yongzhai and four others have been opened. But in the murals found within, the 7th century heyday of the Tang dynasty is brought to life in stunning detail and colour. Their scenes show a wealthy, diverse society where customs, goods and fashions of foreign lands were welcomed, integrated, reinterpreted and made together into something unique. It was a melting pot, impossible to imagine without the network of trade routes which linked Tang China and the world. The Silk Road stretched from the west of the Tang capital of Xi'an. Its merchant caravans skirted the mountain ranges of Central Asia. They threaded the valleys of Afghanistan and crossed the Karakum Desert. And on and on they went towards the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea and Europe beyond. The Silk Road is a term coined by a German geographer von Richthofen in the late 19th century to refer to an extensive network of nodes used for trade in essentially the medieval period, sometime between 3rd and 4th century and right up to around the period of the Mongol conquest, 13th, 14th century. So about a thousand years of medieval history. The Silk Road is the mainstream to make prosperity of the Tang dynasty financially and culturally. Silk Road is actually a path for communication, migration and trade It's a complex network of oasis towns which essentially join China with the Central and Western parts of Asia. The people who dominated the Silk Road are the Sogdians. The Tang Chinese, the Tang state was invested hugely in the infrastructure of the Silk Road because they valued the imports and they valued the import-export business. But the actual trading was dominated by Central Asians rather than by Tang Chinese themselves along the route itself. The Silk Road which connected Tang China to the West had its origins centuries earlier. The Greeks under Alexander the Great had pushed east as far as India. Two centuries later, their descendants in Central Asia were met by Chinese embassies of the Great Han Dynasty. A Chinese military presence in the region followed securing the first open trade route across the continent. The Han coveted the horses bred further west which were stronger and faster than their native breeds. Chinese luxury such as silk went the other way passing from merchant to merchant across thousands of miles making many rich along the way. But such a lucrative trade route was jealously contested. Every power in the region wanted its piece and opportunistic bandits were always ready to swoop on the unguarded and unprepared. The Han Dynasty fell in the third century. The Roman Empire too would soon fracture. The Silk Road closed. It was not until the Tang unified China and expanded into Central Asia again in the 7th century that the direct link to Europe was reopened and it would carry far more than just silk. There were more than silk which were traded along the Silk Road. There were also glass, gold and silver. It's also very important to the development of Chinese cuisine including all sorts of pies and new fruits like melons and grapes and walnuts. For the first time Chinese start to enjoy wine made of grape because before that the Chinese wine is usually made of rice or sorghum. Many other things other than silk were moving across the Silk Road including things to do with medicine, ideas, people, warfare, luxuries all kinds of things. It's very interesting from the mural painting we discover a lot of evidence about during this time China has adopted a lot of cultural activity from Central Asia. For example the first time we see the Chinese start to play polo this all never happened in China before. Probably the most important set of ideas that travelled along the Silk Road into China would have been Buddhism as all kinds of sutras were coming from India and triggering and stimulating new interest in this particular religion and faith. It was a huge stimulus to the history of ideas in medieval China. Along with religious ideas there also came new architectural plans like Buddhist pagodas into China. There were also new decorative elements like the very popular pearl borders which were extensively used in Tang Dynasty textiles. The Silk Road enriched the Tang Dynasty in more ways than one and it made control of the empire all the more tempting a prize for the ruthless and ambitious. There was none more ruthless and ambitious than the woman who rose from courtesan to the highest throne in the land one of the most extraordinary figures in Chinese history She was born in 624. Her family was wealthy and an early backer of the new Tang regime. That saw her place in the imperial court as a lesser concubine to the emperor. She was 14 years old. She watched, she learned and she waited for her moment. Wu Zetian started as a concubine of the second emperor of the Tang Dynasty, Emperor Tai but she must be a very charming woman. That's why after Emperor Taizong died she was actually taken again into court by Taizong's son, Emperor Gaozong as his concubine at that time and then later she became the empress. Unfortunately five years later Emperor Gaozong got a stroke so after that Wu Zetian took over the power and became the emperor's dowager and eventually she claimed herself emperor of China. She would have retained a lot of power from behind the curtain as it's called but clearly didn't wish to relinquish it. Her husband Emperor Gaozong faded away and died in 683. Their son inherited the throne but he proved too independent-minded for his mother and she deposed him after just two months. She sent the young man into exile and installed his younger brother as her puppet. In 690 she then removed him too and seized ultimate power herself. She was the only female in the history of China who actually became an emperor. She ran the state for more than 40 years. Firstly unofficially as an empress then afterwards he claimed herself an emperor. It's important to say also this is one of the great moments of flowering of Chinese culture. She was a great sponsor of arts and religion and so many of the religious organizations and artists would have thrived and flourish under her patronage but she was ruthless and she was clearly very power-hungry and also quite insecure and didn't hesitate to execute or demote or banish anyone who came up against her. Wu Zetian's secret police stamped out any dissent. Old and powerful families who might threaten her were repressed. In their place she promoted those whose loyalty would be to her alone. But the imperial court soon became a nest of factions vying for favor. The wrong word in the wrong ear could mean death and even her closest family were not safe. In her rise to power it is said Wu Zetian killed her infant daughter to frame and discredit a rival. By the time she was emperor she had lost none of that calculating brutality as her granddaughter princess Yong Tai was soon to discover. At the beginning of the 8th century China was ruled by an aging despot. Wu Zetian had begun life at court as a lowly concubine but through her cunning and her brutality she had seized power, deposed her own children and declared a new dynasty of her own. The empress was growing old however. She relied more and more on her two lovers, the Chang brothers Yi Gi and Zhang Zhong. The Changs grew powerful and made enemies. Among those whispering against the brothers were two of Wu Zetian's grandchildren, the teenagers Prince Yi De and Princess Yong Tai. Princess Yong Tai was obviously said to be a great beauty who if she stood next to plum blossoms the plum blossoms would look drab. Prince Yi De's name is Li Chong Run. He is the grandson of Emperor Giao Zhong and Empress Wu Zetian but when Empress Wu Zetian was in power he got himself into trouble by criticising his grandma's unusually intimate relationship with two male officers and her trust towards them. She displayed what would have been regarded as very corrupt behaviour by favouring her favourites with business deals and status titles, elevating them essentially far beyond as it were their worth. Wu Zetian discovered that Princess Yong Tai and her brother and her husband talked about her private life behind her back. She got very annoyed. Their youth and family connections were no defence. Wu Zetian's vengeance was swift. Yi De, Yong Tai and her husband were all sentenced to death. There were different records about their death. So Prince Yi De supposedly was king to death but there are different stories about the death of Princess Yong Tai. It's not entirely clear, her epitaph says she died in childbirth but it's more likely that she was poisoned and by the Empress Wu. Archaeologists and also scholars have discovered her brother and also her husband would die just one day before her. So this coincidence seems unlikely to happen, she died in childbirth. So now most of the scholars have agreed that she was killed by her own grandmother Wu Zetian. But Wu Zetian's grip on power was fading. Despite the risks, a plot was hatched to remove her favourites, the hated Zhang brothers. When she fell ill early in 705, the conspirators made their move. The brothers were killed and the ailing Empress forced to abdicate. The son she had deposed 20 years earlier reclaimed the throne. Wu Zetian's dynasty was over. Old crimes were wiped away with it. Princess Yong Tai and her brother were reburied. Magnificent new tombs were built for them. A ringing statement of the break with the old regime. The tombs for a start are exceptionally large, sometimes several hundred metres by several hundred metres. Both tombs share the same structure, with two large tomb chambers underneath a truncated mound above ground. And these tomb chambers were linked with a short corridor and they were approached by a sloping tomb passage with a ground level opening. Remember we're in a world of sumptuary laws here, where according to your status on the social hierarchy, that determines what kind of luxury you can be and must be afforded for everything in life and in death. And Princess Yong Tai was treated with great honour similar to that of an Empress. Grand tombs of Princess Yong Tai and her brother were sealed up in the year 705. But as the decades and centuries passed, the ways in were forgotten. All of these tombs are basically all marked by a very grand spirit way, flanked by large stone statues which lead to a massive tomb mount or actual mountain. There would originally have been guards and guardians and keepers living on site. But once the dynasty has fallen, there's no reason for that and they gradually would have melded into the landscape. It can be very difficult to actually locate where exactly the tomb chambers are, either underground underneath a big grave mound or within a big mountain. So if you see the big mound there, but you still don't know from where you dig into and to locate the tomb chambers where everything is buried. The majority of the Tang Tomb was rediscovered soon after the Cultural Revolution. China started to open to the outside world. So they need more accommodation, hotels to accommodate the visitors. So they have a huge construction work everywhere in China. And this is the main period a large Tang Tomb has been discovered. Archaeologists began the first scientific excavations of the Qianling or Siliam in the 1960s. The teenage prince and princess would have been buried with a treasury of gold, silver and jade. But that was nowhere to be found in their tombs. It's been looted and lost in the many centuries since. The tombs of the Qianling area were probably looted by the end of the Tang Dynasty or if not shortly afterwards. I think most of the stories are that it was probably soldiery or bandits who would have done the looting. Looters will only be able to take what is portable. They probably couldn't have taken very heavy objects like heavy sarcophaguses or very heavy bells. So they would have gone for objects of value, things made for example of silver. All objects made of precious materials like gold and silver or jade were taken. So for example in the tomb of Prince Zhang Huai, there was a jade book with gilded inscription which indicates his identity. So that jade book was broken down into pieces and taken away and only fragments remained in the tomb. But the thieves were less interested in pottery. Hundreds of ceramic figures were left in Princess Yongzhai's tomb alone. And there was another thing the raiders did not steal. The stunning frescoes which line the tomb walls. You have recreations of court scenery, of the capital scenery and of massive processions and events. The first section of the mural painting depicts the official guardian guarding the tomb. And the second part of the tomb is about her personal life. And the last section of the mural painting, that is where the coffin was found. What gets painted in the tombs are all the things that the occupant is going to need in the afterlife. So if that means for example that they must be accompanied by a dozen beautiful ladies-in-waiting, then they must be painted there. If it also means that they must have musicians and dancers, bodyguards. If they must be able to witness great military parades and pageants. If they must live in fantastic buildings and be fed marvellous food. The wherewithal must all be there. We don't know any names of those craftsmen who created the mural paintings within the tombs and also the ceramic figures. Despite that their works are very fine, high quality. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. The content of the images gives us a way to imagine all kinds of everyday scenes that we would never have otherwise been able to conceive of. Only a few of the Tang Dynasty paintings have survived. They were originally painted in silk. So this discovery of the mural painting helped us to understand their daily life. What's interesting about the Tang period and these murals is that we're not just looking at an introspective China. We're looking at China that is fully integrated into a massive regional economy across Eurasia. Which means that there would have been ambassadors and traders and merchants and emissaries and all sorts of other people in the capital at the time. And of course they find their way into these murals as well. On the walls of the Chenling tombs we see Persian wine glasses and foreign dignitaries. We see musicians and instruments from far off lands. We see cheetahs and camels and other exotic beasts. We see all the world coming to Tang China to trade, to pay tribute, to serve and to make a new life. And we see the change in women's status too. Society definitely became more tolerant and vibrant with all the nomadic fashions coming in. And there was definitely much less social segregation of women. The women in the Tang dynasty, they enjoy much higher social status in the society than any period in Chinese history. They start to dress up and imitate the European style or even the fashion from the Central Asia in many ways, in their makeup, in their dress and even their social life. We're still in the medieval period. It is still a patriarchal system. The place of women is to correspond to men, to be demure and not to come out from behind the curtain. But that said, women could ride horses. Women might even have played polo. They could certainly get out and about, aristocratic women that is. I imagine that in a broader historical scheme, their status was considerably higher and they had more freedom, especially than they did in the latter half of the dynastic period. But this outward-looking society would not last forever. Even as Tang China reached its zenith, there were forces at large in the empire which would tear the dynasty apart. By the middle of the 8th century, Tang China was at the peak of the Golden Age. Wu Zetian's divisive reign was over. Under the rule of her grandson, Emperor Xianzhong, China enjoyed decades of political stability, peace and prosperity. The Tang dynasty must have been one of the most powerful empires in the world, if not the most powerful in the medieval period. It had a much larger population and it had a far greater trading status compared to any other state at the time. This very open era in China from all the cultural and population exchange came into a full bloom in the Tang dynasty. The tombs themselves are a great mark of, you know, the scale of the tombs, you know, several hundred metres by several hundred metres. It's an indication of the wealth, the luxury, the power and what the status of China was among the regional powers that traded with it, that recognised it. In December 755, however, disaster struck. An Lushan was a powerful general in the Tang army and a favourite of the emperor, but he had a bitter rivalry with the emperor's chief minister. After one provocation too many, An Lushan rebelled. Civil war beckoned in China. With the mighty northern garrisons under his command, An Lushan swept southwards. Within months, his armies had captured the great city of Puyang. There he declared himself the first emperor of a new dynasty, the Yan. He marched onwards to Chang'an. The emperor fled. The city fell. An Lushan was unable to secure the whole country. Indeed, he could not even rule his own family. Early in 757, he was murdered by his son. He, in turn, was killed by a loyalist to the dead general. The new Yan dynasty was imploding. The rebellion failed, but for the Tang, victory came at a cost. The economy was in tatters. Thousands upon thousands had died and more had been forced to flee their homes. The capital, Chang'an, had been looted. The central bureaucracy there was decimated. The glue, as it were, that was holding the state together started to come apart, and you start to get militarism, you start to get rebellions, you start to get independent governors, and that's a recipe for a disaster for a unified, centralized state. A further series of agrarian rebellions finally torn down the dynasty in the beginning of the 10th century. The Tang dynasty never recovered from the 756 An Lushan rebellion, even though in name it carried on right up until 907. As the power and authority of the Tang withered, so did their control over the western regions. Their old rivals, the Tibetan Empire, swooped in. The Silk Road, which had brought the Tang such prosperity, was closed. The 9th century then saw a series of natural disasters and another devastating uprising against imperial authority. This time, there would be no recovery. In 907, the last Tang emperor was forced from the throne. After ruling China for almost 300 years, the great dynasty was over. China entered a new age of political upheaval, as the once unified state collapsed into rival kingdoms. But the triumphs of the Tang dynasty were not forgotten, and though their reign ended more than 1,100 years ago, the legacy of Tang China can still be felt today. The impact on Chinese history has been immense. They defined many of the institutions and institutional practices that come to help us identify what their culture is. I think the Tang dynasty really has left lasting legacies in Chinese culture. It's renowned for its literature and its ceramics. Also, it is when woodblock printing started in China. So these are all the lasting legacies in Chinese material culture which are still very important in our daily life. If you take, for example, something like the civil service examination system for recruitment of officials to government, that was founded in the Han dynasty, but it really only became a meritocracy in the Tang dynasty. And towards the middle, towards the end of the Tang dynasty, you start to get men coming into government who are often from obscure families but are brilliant. And a mechanism was found within the system to enable them to rise to the top and to become advisors to government. So these kinds of institutional frameworks are hugely important, not to mention things also like calligraphy. In the history of calligraphy, essentially by the early Tang dynasty, the modern script which everyone writes today was formed. They still talk about the Silk Route. They still want to revise the Silk Route So you can see the new president, Xi Jinping, he emphasised so-called one belt, one road. This is one to echo their golden period of Silk Route. And when Chinese look back, they consider this period is one of the most powerful dynasties in their history. Stunning murals discovered in the tombs of Princess Yongzhai and Prince Yida have opened our eyes to the wonders of the Golden Age. But the earth may harbour more secrets still. Many of the tombs of the Zhenling mausoleum have not been excavated. Even greater treasures may yet come to light. It's a large tomb complex with the larger tombs for emperors and empresses and smaller what are called satellite tombs for their siblings, offspring or for meritorious officials or generals or people of that kind. We know the imperial line. We know the names of a lot of the royals. There will certainly be tombs that have not been discovered. The main tomb in the Zhenling mausoleum, the tomb of the empress Wu Zetian and emperor Gao Zhong, were still unexcavated. This is also probably the only intact royal tomb that remains in the mausoleum. I'm sure there are still plenty of tombs waiting to be discovered because during that time, apart from the royal tombs that have been found in the capital Xi'an, there are still some high-ranking individuals that have been buried in different parts of China and these tombs are still waiting to be discovered. We will probably expect to see a lot more fascinating mural paintings, a lot more valuable items, for example gold and silver, in these tombs and also maybe very prominent artistic work like calligraphy work. There is still the legend that a divine piece of calligraphic work by an Eastern Jin calligrapher, Wang Xizhi, was in one of these imperial tombs of the Tang dynasties. I think the Chinese government sensibly has a policy of not biting off more than it can chew and of just dealing one by one with the major tombs, which require a huge amount of archaeological resource and effort to excavate and then to report upon. So I think they should take their time and do it methodically and sensibly. The Tang tombs already excavated require constant care. 97 of their delicate murals have been removed to the Changzhi History Museum in Xi'an. There, the startling images of the past, preserved so long underground, can be safeguarded for generations to come. The murals that we have from the Tang imperial tombs, there's really nothing like it in scale or ambition. One of the reasons why people marvel at those Tang imperial murals is obviously that they can use them as a way to try and imagine what was life like at a court. There's so many aspects. There's the fashion, there's the internationalism, the cosmopolitanism, the wealth and luxury, the pointers towards architecture. There's so many aspects of life that are brought to life by these murals. What was it like to be a fly on the wall at the court of the princess? We really wouldn't have very much idea without these amazing Tang dynasty imperial murals. It will be decades at least before the remaining tombs of the Tang dynasty are opened, but the murals already revealed have transformed how we picture Tang China. They have shown us what the history books can only tell us, that this was a cosmopolitan society connected to the world and a military superpower unrivaled in its age. And though the murals may have faded and their paints cracked, they have preserved something more precious than all the treasures that once filled those silent tombs. They preserve the spark of life.