Chapter 0243 – Luoyang Shovel

After some explanations from Fan Wrong and Ying Ning. There is also Meng Qiuqian this little girl chirping on the side to add, Zhuang Rui know, they are excavating, is the Tang Wenzong Li Ang’s imperial tomb.

Zhuang Rui when he went to school to read the first novel, is Liang Yusheng’s female emperor Xuan Ying biography, from that will be on the attention of the Tang Dynasty is naturally more, often look for some of the history of the Tang Dynasty to see, but the more you know, Zhuang Rui is not much of a good feeling about the Tang Dynasty.

Although the Tang Dynasty is famous outside, even the early years of the people abroad to the Tang people, with the title of Chinatown, but the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, in fact, the end are quite miserable, even the great achievements of the founding emperor Li Yuan, and that the Tang Ming Emperor Li Longji, are usurped by his son, secluded and depressed to death.

The later emperors who are not famous, were killed by eunuchs or ministers, also not a few, not many can get a good end. The Tang Emperor Wenzong, the 14th emperor of the Tang Dynasty, also had a miserable end.

We all know that the eunuchs of the Ming Dynasty domineering, but the Tang Dynasty is even more than ever, when the dynasty political cronyism each other, the frequent mobilization of officials, the regime and even the emperor’s abolition of the life and death of the eunuchs are in the hands of the eunuchs.

Emperor Wenzong of the Tang Dynasty was established by eunuchs, and later on, he employed Li Xun and Zheng Zhi to eliminate eunuchs. In the ninth year of the Daho Dynasty, Li Xun lured eunuchs to visit the so-called “Manna” in an attempt to eliminate them in one fell swoop, but the matter was exposed, which led to the massacre of eunuchs, and the Emperor Wenzong, who was even more restrained by eunuchs after the event, fell ill and died in depression.

And after the death of Tang, the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, but also the endless war, to bring great harm to the Central Plains.

“Fan, this Guanzhong eighteen mausoleums, all of them have been documented long ago, why did you not start excavating them until now?”

Zhuang Rui is a little puzzled, as far as he knows, the eighteen tombs in Guanzhong, in addition to Wu Zetian and Gao Zong buried together in that mausoleum, all have long been patronized by grave robbers, the country wants to protect the words. Should have done it a long time ago!

“Brother Zhuang, this you do not know, the state for cultural relics excavation, has always been extremely cautious, not as a last resort, will not easily go to dig the tomb. The reason why we are here is because some time ago, Guangdong Customs seized a batch of smuggled cultural relics, one of them is even a national level cultural relic of the Horse Treading Swallow, according to the account of the captured cultural relics dealer, this batch of cultural relics is from the tomb of Emperor Wenzong, that’s why we are here to do a salvage excavation, to see if we can protect some of the cultural relics down.”

Xiao Fan some words did not say, in fact, the state control of the excavation and archaeology of the tomb, the root cause is still in the money above, due to the unearthed cultural relics for a long time by the erosion of soil and humid environment, the maintenance of the unearthed after the earth is very important, which requires a large amount of expenditure.

Not to mention, the collection and maintenance of those cultural relics in the National Palace Museum, the money spent every year is an astronomical figure. Even so, there are many valuable cultural relics due to poor preservation, damage, of course, these things are not good for publicity.

The country is so, those local cultural relics and archaeological departments, it is more not pay attention to some of the water Yamen, simply can not get the money to maintain the cultural relics, so some people proposed to suspend the excavation of the tomb, so that the cultural relics continue to stay in the ground.

But in Zhuang Rui’s opinion, this is some bullshit, cultural relics in the ground to stay more than one day, the chances of damage and theft is more than one point, some people as long as fewer people to eat and drink a few times for the protection of cultural relics of the money will be saved, of course, for such a proposal, the leadership will not be adopted, drinking is also a need for the revolutionary work Well, don’t think that every day to drink like two or five million like a very comfortable.

“By the way, you just said the horse treading on the flying swallows, that is the Han Dynasty objects ah! And so far only one unearthed, how to say is unearthed from the tomb of Wenzong? Isn’t it imitated by later generations?”

Speaking of cultural relics, Zhuang Rui is considered half an expert, for the famous horse Feiyan, he is naturally no stranger.

In 1969 in Gansu Weiwu County unearthed horse Feiyan, is the Eastern Han Dynasty sculpture art and cast bronze technology into one of the outstanding works. In the history of Chinese sculpture represents the highest artistic achievement of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

The whole work of copper horse head, four hooves, horse tail high, mouth open for hissing, its three feet in the air, after the right hoof on the back of a swallow is vibrating wings flying, Yan Guou head startled to see, and echoed, running horse head slightly left, due to the hooves of the horse’s feet, horsehair and horse tail of the fluttering, just like the sky horse, to the Flying Swallows do not feel its heavy and surprised by the speed of its bold conception, the romantic approach to give a person with a thrilling sense of, let a person Called.

However, this work, Zhuang Rui only heard of an excavation, so Fan wrong said the piece of horse flying swallow some doubts.

Fan wrong shook his head, said: “is not a later imitation, after identification, that piece of horse flying swallow, from the size and shape as well as material. And Gansu collection of that one is almost exactly the same, this also shows that in the Han Dynasty, should be more than just only made such a piece of artifacts, the teacher is for this reason to come, he also wants to know, this artifact is really unearthed in the Tang tomb.”

“All come up and rest, brother Fan Wrong, you’re just lazy.”

The little girl’s voice came out from above, and the people at the bottom of the pit swarmed up. It would be close to noon already, the sun was too poisonous, that’s why they had to wait until after four or five o’clock in the afternoon, when the sun was about to set and then dig for a while.

“Ermao, pick two more watermelons.”

Although he hadn’t done any work at all, Zhuang Rui still felt his mouth dry and took out fifty dollars from his pocket and handed it to Ermao.

“No, no, big brother Zhuang, er can’t take your money.”

Ermao waved his hand repeatedly, if this money was given by the archaeological team, he would have taken it, but what Zhuang Rui pulled out, he didn’t dare to take it.

“Take it! This is bought by the archaeological team, go and come back quickly!” Zhuang Rui knew Ermao’s mind and shoved the money into his hand.

“Hey, I’ll be back in a while.” Ermao jumped up like a rabbit and ran quickly to the melon field.

When Ermao came back, followed by a few women, each picking two baskets, this is to send food, the archaeological team this time, are living in the Liu family home, due to the noon round-trip time to more than two hours, so they do not go back, but spend a little more money, let Zhuang Rui people to send over.

Zhuang Rui is also hungry, not much meat and fish on this farm food, but also ate with relish, but Yingning a few people, ate a few days of such meals, some tired, rice did not eat a few mouths, are going to deal with the watermelon of the Ermao embrace.

After eating, Zhuang Rui and Yingning Fan wrong several people. All gathered to Professor Meng’s side, while those staff members with the locally hired women, were looking for a place with shade to cool off, but it was those few armed police officers who ate a few pieces of watermelon before dutifully taking up the guarding task again.

“Mr. Meng, can you be sure that this place, is the location of Wen Zong’s tomb? I see that the things unearthed here are all very ordinary!”

Zhuang Rui had just gone to look at the broken porcelain pieces that were placed together and marked, and although their craftsmanship was still meticulous, they did not look like royal offerings, and the aura in his eyes could now penetrate the ground at a depth of about ten meters, and he did not find any precious artifacts below.

Professor Meng did not get angry at Zhuang Rui’s question, and after thinking for a moment, said, “The tombs of the Tang Dynasty were usually built on mountains, like the joint tomb of Emperor Wu and Emperor Gaozong Li Zhi, which was built in a mountain. The location where we are now, is the end of this mountain range, belongs to the feng shui treasure land of the mountain and water hugging grid, the tomb of Emperor Wen should be here, it’s just that more than a thousand years down the line, through the war, several times stolen, it has been difficult to deduce from the ground building to the location of the underground mausoleum. The reason why we are digging here is because a robbing hole was found next to this before, and after probing, this soil is also a five-flower soil, just that the place where the robbing hole appeared has been dug all the way up now, and the unearthed objects are not of much value, which doesn’t tell us much about the problem, or maybe the direction of our digging is wrong.”

The problem mentioned by Zhuang Rui, Professor Meng had been considering it for a long time, judging from the objects unearthed now, this is like a burial tomb, but within a few hundred meters around, they have all probed, only here the underground is five flowers soil, other places when they hit down seven or eight meters deep, they encountered a rocky layer, and it is impossible for there to be a burial tomb.

“Fan, Yingning, you guys take the Luoyang shovel and walk a little farther, make some more holes out, pay attention to the straight line distance from the sealing soil layer.”

Prof. Meng pondered for a while and assigned the task to his two disciples, in fact, after digging out the cross-section of the robber holes, he had this thought, and Zhuang Rui’s words prompted him to make up his mind.

However, this matter was just a bit more painful for Fan Wrong and Yingning, using a Luoyang shovel to hit the hole was not like digging to save effort, hitting down seven or eight meters deep, both bladders would become sore and weak.

“I’ll go with you guys.”

Zhuang Rui also stood up, he was mainly interested in the legendary Luoyang shovel and wanted to see it.

The term Luoyang Shovel had always been associated with grave robbing, and there were different stories about who invented it, and one of the more reliable ones was that it was invented by Li Duck, a grave robber from the countryside near Luoyang, Henan Province, at the beginning of the 20th century.

Around 1923, Mapo village villagers Li Duckzi came to a place called Mengjin near his home to catch the market, turned around for a while, he squatted on the side of the road to rest, you know, Li Duckzi usually make a living as a grave robber, so he often think about the problems related to grave robbing.

Inadvertently, he saw not far from him there is a baozi store, selling baozi people are preparing to play a small hole in the ground, he played a hole in the ground tool caused Duck Li’s interest, because he saw, the width of only 2 inches, into the U semi-circular iron, every poke into the ground, can bring up a lot of soil.

Experienced grave robber Li Duck immediately realized that this thing is easier than the usual use of shovels to explore the tomb, so he was inspired, compared to that tool made a paper pattern, find a blacksmith according to the paper pattern made in kind, the first Luoyang shovel was born.