The China History Podcast · Laszlo Montgomery

Ep. 370 | The Looting of the Eastern Tombs

·39 min·2 clips

Cixi's tomb reportedly held 12,604 pearls, 85 rubies and sapphires, and a black pearl in her mouth.

1. The China History Podcast episode on the looting of the Qing Eastern tombs centers on the 1928 raid at Malanyu near Zunhua in Hebei province. 2. Laszlo Montgomery hosts the episode and frames it as a return to a forgotten Patreon story from June, with references to Andrew Shaw, his book Spoil, and prior CHP episode 286 on Empress Zhang Sun. 3. The episode asks why the Qing tombs at the Eastern and Western necropolises became targets, and why Sun Dianying's raid still matters in Chinese historical memory. 4. Montgomery opens with tomb robbery in the Qin, Han, Tang, and Qing worlds, naming Ma Wang Dui, Sanxingdui, Tutankhamen, and the Great Pyramid of Giza. 5. He recounts Cao Cao's order to search for buried treasure, the discovery of Cao Cao's tomb in December 2008 in Anyang, and the scholarly debate that continued until 2018. 6. The episode then turns to Wen Tao, who reportedly used 10th-century excavation methods to tunnel into Tang imperial tombs and desecrate 18 of the 18 Tang mausoleums. 7. Montgomery uses Emperor Taizong's Zhao Ling to illustrate the scale of the losses and mentions the legend of Wang Xizhi's Lantingji Xu being discarded during the looting. 8. He explains the Qing burial landscape by naming the Eastern tombs at Malanyu and the Western tombs at Yi County, both arranged according to feng shui and central spirit roads. 9. The episode describes how Shunzhi's Xiaoling, Kangxi's Jingling, Qianlong's Yuling, Xianfeng's Dingling, and Tongzhi's Huiling fit into the Eastern and Western burial system. 10. Montgomery notes that Cixi prioritized wood and burial grandeur over a ceremonial avenue for Tongzhi, and he cites the 42-year construction of Cixi's tomb from 1866 to 1908. 11. The most striking material detail is the reported inventory from Cixi's coffin mattress: 12,604 large pearls, 85 rubies and sapphires, two emeralds, and 203 tourmalines and white jades. 12. He also mentions the 114-gram black pearl that had been placed in Cixi's mouth and later surfaced in Tokyo in 1993. 13. The Qianlong tomb raid is described with six coffins, a flooded chamber, and the removal of the emperor's skeleton and concubines from the Yuling. 14. Montgomery says the raiders filled about 30 trucks with imperial plunder and let officers and soldiers take additional items as they left. 15. The stolen goods were moved through Beijing contacts, including a relative of Tan Wenjiang and the gallery of Huang Jun, before being sold to collectors. 16. Reuters broke the story first, and the public reaction was strong enough that the desecration became a major topic in and beyond China. 17. The episode has a conversational, solo-narration style, with Montgomery moving between site description, anecdote, and quoted details from tomb inventories and legends. 18. The tone stays brisk and informal, with repeated historical digressions, dry asides, and direct address to CHP listeners. 19. Listeners interested in Qing imperial history, tomb archaeology, and warlord-era politics will get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a short, tightly edited narrative without historical digressions may skip it.

As heard by us

Imperial tombs, costly choices, and the uneasy afterlife of looted treasure.

The Eastern Tombs come through as both imperial monuments and a record of what power leaves behind. The episode follows mausoleums tied to the Qianlong, Xianfeng, and Tongzhi emperors, then lingers on the choices behind them, including Cixi's decision to put resources into…

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Why you'd press play

You get imperial mausoleums, a suspicious imperial death, looted treasure, and burial choices shaped by an uneasy belief in the next world.

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