Xuzhou Off-the-Beaten-Path Attraction—Beidong Mountain Western Han Dynasty Chu King Mausoleum

Beidong Mountain Han Tomb is located about ten kilometers north of Xuzhou City, on the north bank of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, and to the west of the Jinpu Railway in Dongshan Village, Maocun Town, Tongshan District. The village is commonly known as Beidong Mountain because it is situated to the north of Xuzhou City. There are three peaks in the village, with the southeastern one called Huan Mountain. Inside this mountain, there is a stone chamber tomb, which was robbed in the early years. There are many inscriptions left by later generations on the walls of the tomb passage, which are said to be the tomb of Sima Huan Chui, a Song Dynasty official, but it is actually a Han Dynasty tomb. The tomb faces south with its back to the north, with a total length of 77.65 meters and an area of 447 square meters. It consists of the tomb passage, main building, and auxiliary buildings. It is a combination of vertical shaft rock pits and horizontal cave cliff dwellings, half excavated and half constructed, with a very unique design. The main building includes side chambers, ear chambers, a front hall, and a rear sleeping area with 8 rooms. The walls of the main chamber are smoothed with stone powder, coated with lacquer, and then covered with cinnabar for corrosion and moisture resistance. The auxiliary buildings total 11 rooms, including storage rooms, dressing rooms, a bath, kitchen, well, stove, toilet, and even places for dance, music, and banquets. Although the tomb has been robbed, many precious cultural relics were still uncovered. Among them, there are fifty to sixty pieces of jade from a jade burial suit, which are scale-shaped and represent an early form, providing an annotation for the 'pearl scales' mentioned in 'Lüshi Chunqiu'. A large number of half-liang coins were also unearthed in the tomb passage, totaling about seventy to eighty thousand pieces, indicating that the tomb dates back to the early Western Han Dynasty and also reflects the ability of feudal lords to mint coins in large quantities within their fiefdoms. Beidong Mountain Han Tomb is the only imperial mausoleum excavated in China so far that has been built completely according to the living scenes of the yang world. It is also the most complex burial structure among the mausoleums of the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties in Xuzhou.