May 9, 2017 • 41 mins
Chinese aristocracy of the Western Han Dynasty embarked on their journey into the afterlife within garments of stone -- luxurious suits of jade armor entailing thousands of individual plates sewn together with gold, silver or silk. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian explore this ancient funeral custom and both the scientific and superstitious qualities of jade.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and my name
is Christian Seger. We have kind of like a unofficial
series of episodes that we've been doing over the course
(00:24):
of the last two years that are related to various
Asian cultures and death and uh, this is another one
of those. So we've talked about ghost burial before, we've
talked about Chinese immortality. Uh. And then this is also
slightly connected to the episode that we did on or
maybe it was two episodes on mummification. Yeah, I feel
(00:47):
like we've done two, maybe more. I know that we've
talked about exploring more and more of the mummification cultures
u throughout the world. I know what it is. We
we discussed Japanese custom in an episode. Yeah. Oh, and
then there's also the monks. They have, the self mummifying monks. Yes,
those guys. That's the other one. So this is along
those lines. Today we're gonna be talking about jade burial suits.
(01:11):
And once I got done researching this, my first thought
was this would be a far cooler way to make
a new mummy franchise. They've been showing the trailers constantly
for that new Mummy movie with Tom Cruise that's coming
out this summer, and it looks awful. And I think
that this would be a cool mummy like this Mummy
in this giant suit of jade armor coming at you.
(01:34):
That would be so much fun. Yeah, because you look
at the images of this, and there should be an
image of one of these suits of jade burial armor
on the landing page for this episode. It's deffitably your
mind dot com. It's uh, it looks kind of like
the villain in that first Thor movie, you know, that
big suit of animate armor that he fought Destroyer. Yeah,
(01:54):
it looks kind of like the Destroyer. It's it's beautiful
and indeed, I could see an Eastern Mummy franchise. It's
really having some fun with this. Yeah. De being said,
I did not see the Eastern Mummy entry like the
third or fourth Mummy film that came out. Oh did
they do something like that already? Did? Oh? I didn't know.
I don't know what I having not seen it. I
can't speak for the mummy design. However, I know there's
(02:17):
a scene where yet he's attack, So I do kind
of want to watch it for that. Huh. I had
no idea that even existed. This is like from the
nineteen nineties Mummy franchise with a scorpion king and all that. Yeah,
this one was post scorpion king. And that's about all
I know about. Okay, Well, maybe we'll talk about that
one on trailer talk when we do a Facebook live
about these episodes this week. So in this episode, we're
(02:39):
going we're going to be exploring a practice that that
is tied directly to the Western Han dynasty and we're gonna,
I know a lot of you out there are not
gonna have a real firm handle on the dynastic Chinese history.
Don't worry. We're going to root all that where it
needs to be placed in the in the timeline a shortly.
(03:00):
But these suits are you know, we can call them
jade suits, we can call them jade armor. In the
In Mandarin, they're sometimes referred to as you shah, which
are jade caskets, or sometimes u y which are jade garments.
And it is essentially a stone garment if you think
about that, because because jade is a stone, and that's
(03:22):
probably a great place to start. Really, let's just discuss
what jade is before we pile on it's supernatural connotations
and then get into Chinese history. Alright, So jade is
essentially an ornamental green rock. Everyone has probably seen something
that he's either made of jade or is supposed to
(03:42):
be made of jade. But then what does that even mean? Yeah,
I'm thinking of like in the local mall that we
have here, there's like a couple like places where you
can buy sort of like Chinese themed aesthetic decorations for
the home, and usually there's like a piece of jade
in it somewhere, or it might be made of some
(04:04):
kind of fake jade. There's those um, I forget what
they're called, but they have they're like red uh ribbons
or um threads, and they've got a piece of jade
woven into them. Oh yeah. You often see little little
rings of jade, sometimes sometimes worn by by children in
China still or incorporated into some sort of direct decoration
(04:27):
or or personal adornment. And uh. The interesting thing here though,
is that whatever you're calling jade jade is the name
given to two distinct minerals uh neph right and jaded.
And in their purest form. Either of these is white
uh in uh. In Chinese, it's referred to as mutton
(04:47):
fat jade. And you also have minerals such as iron
and chromium that give jade it's mini hues. So there's
not just one color of jade. It's not like a crayola.
This is jade. Pulled it up to your stone and
see if it matches like a between white and like
very green, yeah, very in darker greens. Yeah. So let's
talk about these two varieties real quick. Uh. The nef
(05:10):
right is sometimes referred to as true jade. It's very strong,
it has a more vivid green coloration. And this is
the stuff that the Chinese worked with during the Han dynasty,
which is what we're gonna be talking about today, because
jadite wasn't introduced to China until the late sixteen hundreds
via Burma. So when we're talking about these pieces of
(05:30):
jade armor, they're made using nef right, not jadeite. Now. Jadite,
on the other hand, is more fragile, and it has
a brilliant gleaming surface when polished. Now, jade is usually
found inside pebbles or boulders, where like the rough stony
exterior doesn't really give a clue as to what's in there.
Jade itself, it can't be chipped or flaked, so it
(05:52):
has to be worn down using a rough paste and
a combination of rotary discs, grinders and tools. And during
the Han dynasty this was probably made. This paste was
made with water, grease, and sand, and then iron tools
had been developed specifically for the art and craft of
working with jade to develop and work it further into
(06:15):
various forms. Um. So I think this is a good
point for me to just bring up, Like I think
here in the West jade is sort of this very
like stereotypical attached idea to uh like the orient right,
very bound up in orientalism. Yeah. Like, do you remember
(06:37):
that video game came out gosh, must have been ten
fifteen years ago now, Jade Empire. I played the hell
out of that game. Oh was this that was just
a term based RPG. Yeah, it was made by the
same people who made the Knights of the Old Republic
games and the Dragon Age games. Very similar setup except
for this was in It had a really cool setting,
but it was like a steampunk mythological china um and
(07:01):
you know, as such, used very like kind of stereotypical
pieces from that mythology. But still, I mean, I have
to admit, as much as I love exploring uh Asian history,
I also love fantasy inspired by Asian so uh so
I should I should check it out a little bit.
I don't know. It's one of those where the graphics
(07:21):
don't really hold up. I mean, I haven't played it
and so long I think it was I played it
on the original Xbox But it was fun. You got
like this various group of characters. You would have I
think like three characters at a time that would go
on these like sort of dungeon crawl missions and like
one would be a spell It was very D and
D but it was like we've talked about this on
the show before, this sort of like racist Oriental Adventures
(07:44):
D and D where they would like, you know, you'd
have a spell caster, you'd have a warrior, and you'd
have like a ninja or something like that, and they
would like go there. It was really just like a fighter,
a rogue and a magic user um and yeah, they'd
have these various missions. They'd fight monsters from Chinese mythology. Yeah,
it was fun. Aesthetically so there's probably a little jade
(08:04):
in there. And oh yeah, yeah, I think that the
jade was a big theme in it. Yeah, well, jade
is is a big theme in uh in in Chinese traditions.
So we should probably discuss what it's supernatural powers were
thought to be. We've we've given a brief overview of
its physical properties. Certainly you can go in deeper if
(08:26):
you want to. We're not really a minerals podcast, but
there's a lot of great information out there about jade
if that's your thing. As as far as supernatural qualities go, yeah,
jade was believed to have protective and preservative qualities, warding
off both decay and evil spirits. I've also read that
some believe jade darkens as the wearer gets richer, this
(08:50):
picket poorer. So it's kind of like a mood ring
for your you know, your your financial status. That's great.
Instead of having like an app on your phone that
tells you how you're accounts doing, you just have like
a little piece of jade, like like on one of
those red wristbands. Yeah, you meet somebody you want to know,
uh where they stand, you just take a peek of
their jade. Now, it's also worth pointing out that in
(09:12):
terms of just how important jade is and Chinese tradition
and mythology, you have you D the Jade Emperor, and
he stands as the supreme god in the Chinese mythological pantheon.
And if you if you actually think back to the
episode on the Chinese zodiac that stuff to bow your
mind did a while back. Uh, there's this whole parable
(09:33):
of the swimming zodiac animals in a race, and they're
racing for the U D. Have you seen any of
those who movies about Dr D. I haven't. I'm familiar
with him by name, but I haven't watched their fun
You should take him out now. It's also important to
note that Dallas alchemists as well put put an emphasis
(09:55):
on jade as part of an immortality a lixir that
also contained gold, silver, arsenic, and other ores, and it
was said to provide resistance to aging and decay. In fact,
in the three twenty book Po Pozo, which means the
Master Embracing Simplicity, author Gee Hong wrote that gold and
(10:16):
jade inserted into the nine orifices prevented corpses from decaying. Okay,
so this comes up a lot today when we're talking
about this jade burial armor, and I wanna establish something here.
So I read this and I went, I had to
count my orifices, and I was like, I kept coming
up short. I only counted seven, and then I realized
(10:37):
they were counting the eyes. Yes, and it might sound
kind of grotesque to think of I plugs, but they're
not like corks the more like their little shields. It's
kind of like when cucumbers on the eye. Yeah. The
one I was going for was how they would put
coins on people's eyes that they could pay the ferryman
for the river Sharon. But yeah, this is obviously different mythology,
(11:01):
but it's the same principle. It's like little jade shields
that went over your eyes. So apparently I don't know
if I'm wrong or right, but I never thought of
my eyes as being orifices. Well, it's it's where the
light comes in, right, true, something's going in there now.
It's interesting I mentioned children wearing um jade bengals earlier
(11:22):
and you you still see this uh used in China.
And this is the idea here, is that this protects
the child from harm, including soul separating fright by a
demon and uh, I actually ran across the cool source
for this. So if we if we ever want to
do an episode on Chinese exorcism, uh, playing off our
past episodes on exorcism, this would be a good one
to to seek out. I think that's hard yes from me, audience,
(11:46):
let us know if you're interested in Chinese exorcism now.
In terms of other associations, uh, some traditional Chinese medicine
approaches call for the use of jade massaging tools to
help I was reading about using it on wrinkles on
the face. And there are also ingredients with jade in
the name in Chinese traditional medicine. They're not actually jade,
(12:07):
such as a jade windscreen powder. That's the just a
dried root of of a particular plant, but it has
nothing to do with the mineral itself. So even though
like we're well past this sort of you know myth
that jade has this ability to stave off the k
it's still used in a lot of those sort of
I guess homeopathic methodologies. Uh, Like I was reading about
(12:31):
the one of the ones, uh, the ancient Chinese jade
stone being used, Like I think they would like wrap
it around your neck and it was supposed to help
you with T M J. Yeah, I mean it's I mean,
ultimately it comes down to the idea that here is
this very beautiful, cool looking stone that came out of
the ground. Surely it's worth keeping around for something, right. Yeah.
(12:52):
It reminds me of hematite's there's similar stuff surrounding hemotite. Yeah,
but just I think in different cultures, and you know
a lot of this bleds in to and do other
cultures outside of China. I know, if you if you
happen to visit a Korean sauna, we have one of
these in the Atlanta era and n jaju um and
and I love going there. They have these various saunas
(13:12):
that sauna rooms that have different minerals there, and they
have one that has jade in it. And the idea
here is that quote jade increases metabolism, improves circulation, and
relieves arthritis pain. All right, now, this is giving me
an idea for a business, and I'm not very entrepreneurial,
so maybe somebody out there can start this. So you
combine the jade sauna idea with the floatation sensory deprivation tank,
(13:38):
and you build a sensory deprivation tank out of jade,
and then you climb inside that and you float in
salinated water for an hour. That would be amazing, because
that's what That's something that's kind of lacking with with
float tank scenarios is they are very they're very secular.
They could use a little um mystical spic. Yeah, that
(14:00):
would be fun. I'd do it. Yeah, plug plug our
orifices with give me nine pieces of jade. All right, Well,
before we get those nine pieces of jade, why don't
we take a quick break, and when we get back,
we're gonna give you a little bit of a rundown
on the Western Han dynasty. Alright, we're back. So I
(14:23):
realized Chinese dynastics secession can be confusing for folks. Uh
and and certainly especially if you're just going from zero,
trying to go to from zero to fifty on it. Uh,
It's it's a lot to take, I will admit. I mean,
as some listeners know, I spent time in China as
a kid. I learned Mandarin growing up, and I lived
in Singapore during high school, and Chinese history is completely
(14:47):
lost on me. It's really tough for me to keep
track of it. Yeah, I'm constantly referring back to the
chart with the with the dynasty's. Now. I know there's
a little song I've heard people sing this where it's
Fred Fred Jacka, except it's it's the different dynasties. I
have not heard that. I when I say i've heard it,
I've I've seen a video with two old white Chinese scholars, uh,
(15:11):
singing it to each other as an example of something
you learn in school when you're learning about Chinese sisters.
All right, so it's like a new moonic device. Yeah, okay,
so we're not gonna throw it all at you. Basically,
we're gonna go from the beginning up until the Han
dynasty just and and throughout the years, so you can
place it in the general time frame. And uh, the
(15:31):
Han dynasty is essentially the fourth or fifth dynasty or
the second Imperial Dynasty. It ultimately depends on what you
count as a dynasty. Uh. And and this has to
do with sort of a legendary mythic time. So let's
start from the beginning. First, up, you have the Shop dynasty.
This is seventy to six b C. And it's largely mythological,
(15:54):
with some very early Bronze Age evidence. So yeah, this
is the time of odds and heroes and so, and
this is why some don't actually count this in terms
of historical dynasties. But then comes the Shan Dynasty, and
this was long considered apocryphal, but his historians now correlated
with oracle Bone writings. This period takes us up to
(16:17):
roughly eleven twenty three b C. And the Joe dynasty.
Now this is the first millennium b C. And this
is a time of conflict in China. And there are
two periods here that are a particular note, and that's
the Spring and Autumn from seven eighty one b C
and the Warring States period four through to b C. Okay,
(16:39):
so what I'm seeing here so far is it seems
like these dynasties lasts, you know, roughly around five years. Yeah, yeah,
so far. Now, at the end of the Warring States period,
the Chin Dynasty begins, and this is when the Chin
Kingdom conquered other central Chinese states and became the first
truly impire, a real dynasty on their Chin Sha Hung
(17:02):
the first Emperor of China, and it was during this
rule that the Northern border Wall was implemented, what we
now call the Great Wall, and in the first of
many peasant uprisings to to echo through Chinese history, Lu
Bang rose up and conquered China to found finally the
Han dynasty and two oh six b c E. And
(17:25):
this was only you know, fifteen years later. Okay, So
this this is where we're zoning in on in terms
of this jade burial armor being created, right, But there's
obviously many dynasties afterwards. So yeah, the Han dynasty is
is big money early on, like this is uh, this
is again a time of things coming together, of unity.
Certainly there's still lots of lingering problems as with any
(17:47):
imperial scenario, but but it's it's a time where, uh,
where there's a there's enough there are enough riches out there,
there's enough specialization that you can have something like a
fancy funeral tradition take place. Now, overall, the Han dynasty
run ran from two O two or two oh six
BC until to c E, So we're talking about a
(18:11):
pretty long stretch here, uh, and that at the end
of this in to c that's when everything splits into
the three kingdoms. But we divided the Han dynasty up
into the first the former or Western Han dynasty, and
the and also the later or Eastern Han dynasty. And
that's because in the midst of this UH, this long
you know, four century stretch, you have a rebellion take
(18:34):
place and so and basically what happens is Han dynasty
official Wang Mang sees his power and UH and and
this is referred to as the Shin dynasty nine through
a d he does a pretty poor job, and then
the hans A reclaim power in twenty a d after
besieging the Imperial Palace. He dies in the process. So
(18:57):
in other words, you have two years of of Han rule.
But there's this one little period where a usurper like
a like a twenty year period or actually less than
twenty years of this one guy ruling and then just
getting taken down. So again this is an influential four
centuries in Chinese history saw the institution of Confucian norms,
(19:19):
the roots of the imperial examination system UH, the an
age of great economic, technological, cultural, and social progress. Hans
still refers to the main Chinese ethnic group. And this
is again also the period that gives us these these
amazing jade burial suits. Okay, so we've teased enough. What's
a jade burial suit? Because I think when I first
(19:41):
heard about this, my thought was that it was like
Iron Man, and it was, but Iron Man made of jade,
and that's not correct. There's thousands of little pieces and
these things. Yeah, it's between two thousand and four thousand
of these little jade pieces, all of its sewn together,
and it's sewn together depending on your station, it might
be gold, silver, or silk. So really the suit description
(20:07):
is probably better. This is a a suit made for
a corpse, and it's a suit made of maybe in
you know, mostly stone, and maybe gold and silver or
silk as well. I can't imagine that a living person
could wear one of these and move. It would be
incredibly heavy. Yeah, only a supernatural, um, you know, undead
(20:27):
being in Hollywood movie could do it. Now. We referred
back to our episode on ghost burial earlier, and I
do want to touch on on that real quick because
one of a couple of the ideas we discussed in
there are central to understanding why this much care was
was taken, uh, you know, for a dead individual. So
we we discussed the importance of si Yao, the flyle
(20:53):
pity and Chinese tradition is rooted in Dallas to philosophy
Confucian family values, and it concerns the undying nature of
the human soul. You know, the dead live on in
the afterlife. Uh. And then they're also tied to this
Chinese notion of of of structural completeness, right that you
have this this basic unity of the family and if everything,
(21:13):
if anything is out of out of place there, it's
going to cause disharmony in your life and potentially in
the afterlife. Yeah, we went into far greater detail on
this in the Ghost Burial episode, but I wanted to
reference a USA Today article that was specifically about the
jade burial suits and how it referred to this to
for Western readers. So it claims that tombs in general
(21:37):
were thought to be portals between the living and the dead.
And basically the concept was, and this is similar to
what we went over and Ghost Burial, the soul was divided.
There's one part of the soul that goes to heaven,
the other part stays in the body, and the one
that's in the body had to be appeased or else
it would turn evil, while the one that goes to
heaven acted on behalf of the loved ones by offering
(21:58):
them either protection or good for fortune. And this is
why the living tried to ensure that the deceased were
well provided for in death. So you get very similar
death rituals to the Egyptians in that, like people are
buried with their things, with things that they think will
keep them comfortable. Yeah, there's this this this mix though
(22:19):
with the the ancestor of veneration that it's not only
is this somebody that deserved a proper burial and deserves
to be you know, buried and with the things that
they love. This is also someone who can speak on
your behalf in the afterlife, Like, this is an important
contact to happen. So you want them to be happy,
you want to do right by them. So the very
first one of these suits, which is part of that,
(22:41):
was documented in literature around a d. Three twenty. But
that's documented in literature. We didn't find them until far afterward. Yeah,
it wasn't until nineteen fifty eight that the suit hypothesis
here that that these little j pieces were we were
finding were part of the jade suit. You know, it
(23:02):
was just a theory at the time, and uh, it
wasn't until we actually found a really undisturbed tomb nine
in ninety two Tombs and Heavy and this is where
we found tombs undisturbed by looters or mining efforts. And
it resulted in two complete, recovered and restored suits of
jade armor. And this is quite a story. And if
(23:22):
you've you know, well we're going to talk about this,
but museums here in the United States have had these
suits one or the other, brought around on tour basically, right,
And so it's possible that you've actually seen one of
these sort of restructured and put on display in a
museum here in the West. But uh, that's weird to me.
(23:45):
I'll talk about it more later after we get through it,
but I think it's a little it's it seems slightly
offensive to me, especially given the nature of why it
was built in the first place. Now you mentioned restored,
and that's key because if you see one of these
new museum on display, it is almost assuredly been toward
because despite the ideas tied up with jade, jade doesn't
(24:05):
or at least the jade suit as it was executed,
does not actually preserve the body, so the body ends
up rotting away. There's nothing left but bone. The suit collapses,
and then sometimes the casket collapses as well on top
of it, so everything has to be put back together.
Now you actually have seen one, right, Uh? Yeah, I
think I've seen a couple. But the one that I
(24:26):
got to see in China is the one that impressed
me the most. It was at the Museum of the
Western Han Dynasty, Mausoleum of the Nanyu King and Guang Show.
So I was there with my wife, my my my
newly acquired son. He was not impressed at all. As
I strolled him around in the stroke he was like
(24:47):
two or three, he was like he was one and
a half. He was not having any of it. But
but the tumb was was really impressive for me anyway. Uh.
It was a hidden twenty meters at six ft underground
and the king himself was covered with with a with
a silk and two thousand, two d ninety one pieces
(25:08):
of jade to compose his suit, and the whole tomb
really had the feel of just a cosmic vessel, and
that this was the suit of a of a necronot
you know. Uh, yeah, but very much in keeping with
with the feeling that I get from from any kind
of Egyptian artifacts. Now a number of other such jade
suits accompanied by hordes of silks, lacquer ware, figurines, and bronzes.
(25:32):
You'll find these displayed in many Chinese museums. Uh. They
turn up, as you pointed out, in an international collections
and traveling exhibits h and A Night three count from
the Institute of Archaeology and Beijing claimed ten thousand Han
tombs had been discovered, and this resulted in twenty tombs
with twenty three jade suit remain. All right, we're gonna
(25:54):
take a quick break and then when we come back,
we'll jump right back into it. All right, we're back.
So one of the things that I was reading was
that at the time that these were being made, and
this goes along with our episode on Egyptian mummification. I mean,
this was a process. It wasn't just like they had
jade's suits ready to go right. Um. These suits would
(26:17):
have taken the most skilled of jade smith's over ten
years to make. So they were either building them before
the person died or the person died, they were probably
embombed in some way, and then the suit was built
around them ten years after they had passed away. Now,
(26:38):
as should be obvious from that ten thousand tombs twenty three,
jade's suit remains UH figure there. These were not for everybody.
These were specifically for members of the Han aristocracy, because ultimately,
who else is going to afford a low luxury burial
item like this UH the the work Juhans show or
(26:58):
the Book of the lay or Han. The Chinese court
document from this time explained that your your rank determined
what sort of jade's suit you were well suited for. UH.
Emperors had gold threaded jade suits, vassal kings, high ranking
imperial concubines and princesses had jade suits with silver thread,
and dowager concupines and sisters of the emperor lesser aristocrats
(27:22):
had suits with copper threat. I wouldn't be offended to
wear a copper one, No I would. I would. I'd
be happy with with with copper or kin. If anybody
needs a dowager concubine, call me now. Sometimes there were
added decorations. Emperor Woo's suit was decorated with imagery of
the flood dragon and other sacred creatures, and this is
(27:42):
referred to as the flood dragon jade suit, but a
lot of them are going to be you know, featureless
polished jade. Yeah. One thing to remember here too, is
like we're thrown down in terms of gold and silver
and copper, is that jade was more valuable in China
then gold or silver was in the West and jade crafting,
as we mentioned earlier, it achieved its height during the
(28:02):
reign of Emperor Chien long Uh, and that was from
seventeen thirty six to seventeen nineve CE. He actually made
all jade in the country his private property, and the
idea was that if anybody tried to trade jade, it
was punishable by death because he he owned it all,
regardless of whether or not it was actually in his possession.
(28:23):
Now this ties in nicely with the next point, and
that's that evidence supports the theory that this was a
There was probably a centralized place or a couple of
places for manufacturing these suits. Um artisans would work on
what was again essentially a luxury item, So you can't
just go anywhere and get a jade suit, and um
and while these they still couldn't today, Yeah, I mean,
(28:44):
unless unless you know a guy. Um. It's also worth
noting that while these items were for specific members of
Han aristocracy, there were violations, including an account and this
was shared in a in a paper that will will
side in the landing page by Jeffrey Ko and Yang
Joe Shing. And this was the tale of a eunuch
(29:04):
named Joo Jong who secretly buried his father in a
jade suit. But then he was found out, and so
the casket was opened up uh and um and busted out,
and his entire family was imprisoned for the for the
for the crime. Think about that, I mean, like, given
how difficult these things are to make, Like somehow you
secretly had one of those, made you bury your dad
(29:25):
in it, and then you're found out and caught and
just like utterly punished for it. That's that's that's a story, yeah,
I mean, and it shows how how how important all
of this was to the culture at the time. You know,
this was this is not just you couldn't just be
frivolous and get a jade suit. No, the jade suit
was for particular members of society and to violate uh,
(29:48):
those those societal divisions. Was was a dire matter. Now
we mentioned earlier how in the in the late nineteen
fifties you had this hypothesis these little jade pieces everyone
was finding, we're, we're, we're bits of a jade suit.
But that it wasn't until night when they found those
two tombs and heavy. This is when we actually had evidence.
(30:09):
We actually had two complete, recovered and ultimately restored suits
of jade armor and UH. In particular, they were lushing
printaging of the Kingdom of jeong Shan. So this was
the son of the Western Han Emperor Jing and his
consort dal Juan. Now, while their bodies were undisturbed, the
(30:29):
corpses had collapsed, the casket had collapsed, but everything was
still in place. He had gold thread, she had silk.
His suit contained two thousand four jade pieces, hers contained
at two thousand, one hundred sixty And in both suits,
the only the outer surfaces were polished and the inner
surfaces were scarred by circular cutting tools and straight edge tools,
(30:52):
the very tools that you referred to earlier for the
shaping of jade. Yeah, and while the jade you know,
didn't protect their bodies from decomposition as was thought. The
porous rock that was actually in this this I guess
cave is the best way to describe it did have
absorbed of capabilities. When they were found in nineteen archaeologists
had to work through get this two brick walls and
(31:16):
a thick plate of molten iron that had been poured
between them. And this is obviously because of how bad
the grave robbing thing had become and and partially why
this one was hadn't been robbed yet, you know. Uh,
So they had to work their way through this. Lu
Sheng's body had those jade plugs that we talked about earlier.
(31:36):
He had him in his nose, ears, and mouth, and
then the little jade shields for his eyes. They also
each had guilt bronze headrests that were inlaid with jade,
and they held jade crescents in their hand. Now, the
coffin that was found on the floor that was made
of four thousand pieces of jade, and it had just
completely fallen apart into a pile on the Tumbe floor.
(31:57):
There were also lots of sculptures. As we mentioned earlier,
they they've they've placed lots of little items around too
that we're also made of jade, including those of a Bixie,
which was a mythological powerful winged beast that averted evil,
and I included a picture in here. It's kind of
it's kind of like a dragon. It's like a cross
between like a dragon and a dog with it's got wings. Yeah.
(32:19):
I keep wanting to do like a full exploration as
if such a thing were possible, of of Chinese dragons,
because there's so many different varieties and there are a
lot of things where you look at them and you think, oh, well,
that's a dragon or that's kind of a dragon turtle.
But they all have very particular identities and symbol and
symbolic power like you would and it would depend where
(32:40):
you would want to engrave one or include a statue
of one, if you would protect certain certain structures. You know.
I think I pronounced that pinion wrong too, because I
just went with Bixie because it looks like it rhymes
with pixie, but I think it's supposed to be be
she Okay, So I look at it looks like a
Bixie when I can imagine his name Dambixie. It Hey,
(33:00):
there's the pokemon of their time. I mean, this thing
looks pretty cool. It's it's kind of like a fat
chested dragon dog. Indeed, Now, obviously, when we when we
look at the jade burial suits, we're looking at the
convergence of two different customs, burial in armor and the
sacred use of jade. So there are plenty of examples
of of of just normal decorative armor suits that were
(33:24):
worn by bodies prior to this. And uh, the actually
the prince that we just referred to, I believe he
was buried with a suit of armor. Uh, and the
suit of armor was actually a more modern design, but
he was but that was just included with him, and
he was actually buried, of course in the jade armor.
Now my understanding is these two in particular that we're
(33:45):
referring to, these are the ones that are touring around
the world and you can see them in various museum locations. Yes,
I believe so. Alright, so you're probably wondering, well, then,
what happens to the jade suits Like this is a
pretty fantastic to issue. Why does it fade away? Why
does something so rich and so ornate just vanish? And
(34:06):
the answer is interesting that the answering. The answer has
to do with all of those plundered tombs. It's all
about grave robbing. Yeah, and this was fascinating and disturbing
as well when we read what the the the the
the tomb raiders would do with the suits when they
pilfered them. Yeah, there were more than two dozen suits
(34:27):
that have been discovered since nine eight. But the reason
why there aren't more is because in a d. Two
hundred and twenty three, Emperor when of Way, ordered that
the production of them had to be stopped because of
so much looting. And what would happen is these looters
would go in and they would burn the suits solely
so they could retrieve the gold thread that was within.
(34:49):
They didn't care about the jade. And as you pointed
out off air, well, if you had these little pieces
of jade that were perfectly cut down to make a suit,
you can't go sell that on the black market because
somebody is gonna know, oh, oh, this must have come
from the specific suit, from the specific prints. But gold
you can melt down in turn and whatever you want,
so you can always come up with a story about
that gold. But those jade pieces were clearly stolen from
(35:13):
an important person's body and you might as well just
walk around with a sign and Mandarin that says execute
me now. You You refer back earlier to the poorest
nature of the jade, and there is this this idea
that is put out there that even though the jade
does not have any magical body preserving properties, and you know,
(35:36):
despite the fact that no soft tissue has been been
found preserved by these funeral rights, uh, it has been
suggested that this the poorest nature of the stone itself
might actually preserve some genetic material and that you know,
d NA might be found intermixed with the jade. A
lot of accounts of this notion refer back to a
(35:58):
piece of title Immortal Jade by Sherry uh to Lynco
and this was published in the Canadian Medical Journal. But
to my knowledge, there's been no actual evidence for this
thus far. Okay, but I could see why it would
be an interesting avenue of research, Like there's some possibilities
for genealogical research, especially you know, you mentioned the Han
(36:19):
ethnic group earlier. Related to that, that could be some
interesting stuff if you're looking at DNA samples. Yeah. I
think one of the problems there is that is that
that we do have uh tombs and graves from the
Han dynasty that we're able to study and get genetic
information from. So it's not like these would be the
one place we would find it. Yeah, and this so
(36:41):
this leads into my I know I mentioned this earlier,
but it's just it seems really weirdly offensive that these
relics are kind of pulled out of where they were kept,
trotted out across the world and displayed in museums. I
remember the High Museum here in Atlanta had the terra
Cotta warriors a couple of years years ago, and they
were very cool. But the so my understanding was those
(37:05):
Terracatta warriors were buried with, you know, someone very much
like these Jade's suits were, and I felt similar then.
I don't know. I suppose if they didn't do this,
the tombs would eventually be looted by somebody. But to me,
I guess the idea more along the lines of what
you saw when you were in China is you go
to the actual site itself and you see them that
(37:25):
is at least like sort of compromising. You're allowing them
to keep these suits that they uh that they believed
we're going to protect them in the afterlife. Yeah, I mean,
I guess this gets to do a more complicated issue
and and and it it's gonna vary, you know, from
culture to culture and depending how far back in time
you're going. Because I it this instantly makes me think
(37:46):
back to when I was at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Instantly we went up there for C two e two
and Joe and I went over there, and they have
a wonderful Native American section, a lot of it devoted
to Northwest coast, a Native pe bowls and uh, you know,
they have masks, they have costumes, details about their various
you know, rich um spiritual traditions. But there's a section
(38:09):
that they've completely um marked off. You can't see into
it anymore because they're display depicts, uh important artifacts from
their funeral rights. So okay, yeah, okay. So somewhere along
the line, like maybe that tribe and its current iteration
said we're uncomfortable with this, please don't do it. Yeah,
so it's like a current people saying this is we
(38:30):
find this to be disrespectful, needs to be handled in
a more appropriate manner. I'd be curious if there's if
there's anyone in China who feels that way about this stuff,
or if it's just kind of like they've moved past
that uh veneration for this particular dynasty and they're okay
with you know, sending them around the world and having
(38:51):
them looked at because I guess in a way it
spreads Chinese culture. Yeah, yeah, it's curious. Well, if you're
a listener out there and you have any idea, maybe
you've lived in China or your Chinese yourself, please let
us know. I'd be curious indeed. So so there you
have it. Hopefully we've provided a decent snapshot of another
just really interesting funeral tradition, uh A an artistic tradition,
(39:16):
a time period, a little about the mineral and the
possibility of some sort of genetic material actually being preserved
by this, uh this supernaturally infused funeral. Right now, I
guess some people are probably thinking that I'm a bit
of a hypocrite because I started off the episode saying
I would love to see a movie about a jade
(39:36):
burial suited mummy, But at the same time I kind
of am uncomfortable about actually looking at the real thing. So,
you know, I'd be curious if you If you've got
any information about this that we missed, please let us know.
You can reach out to us on social media. We're
on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram. If you've seen these before
(39:56):
and you've got details that you want to let us
know about, please tell us that too, or maybe in
some pictures that would be cool. Uh do you wear jade?
If you wear, let's share any kind of you know,
supernatural ideas that you carry around with it. And then
you can always visit our website, which is Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That's right, that's where you'll
find uh. All the podcasts, including several of these we've mentioned,
(40:19):
the Chinese immortality, the ghost marriage, that various mummification episodes,
the Chinese zodiac, all of those are there, and we'll
trying to include links on the landing page for this episode.
And if you just want to write us the old
fashioned way, whether it's in English or Mandarin, you can
write us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(40:50):
Is it how stuff works dot com? Part first, Part,
Part Far Far
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and my name
is Christian Seger. We have kind of like a unofficial
series of episodes that we've been doing over the course
(00:24):
of the last two years that are related to various
Asian cultures and death and uh, this is another one
of those. So we've talked about ghost burial before, we've
talked about Chinese immortality. Uh. And then this is also
slightly connected to the episode that we did on or
maybe it was two episodes on mummification. Yeah, I feel
(00:47):
like we've done two, maybe more. I know that we've
talked about exploring more and more of the mummification cultures
u throughout the world. I know what it is. We
we discussed Japanese custom in an episode. Yeah. Oh, and
then there's also the monks. They have, the self mummifying monks. Yes,
those guys. That's the other one. So this is along
those lines. Today we're gonna be talking about jade burial suits.
(01:11):
And once I got done researching this, my first thought
was this would be a far cooler way to make
a new mummy franchise. They've been showing the trailers constantly
for that new Mummy movie with Tom Cruise that's coming
out this summer, and it looks awful. And I think
that this would be a cool mummy like this Mummy
in this giant suit of jade armor coming at you.
(01:34):
That would be so much fun. Yeah, because you look
at the images of this, and there should be an
image of one of these suits of jade burial armor
on the landing page for this episode. It's deffitably your
mind dot com. It's uh, it looks kind of like
the villain in that first Thor movie, you know, that
big suit of animate armor that he fought Destroyer. Yeah,
(01:54):
it looks kind of like the Destroyer. It's it's beautiful
and indeed, I could see an Eastern Mummy franchise. It's
really having some fun with this. Yeah. De being said,
I did not see the Eastern Mummy entry like the
third or fourth Mummy film that came out. Oh did
they do something like that already? Did? Oh? I didn't know.
I don't know what I having not seen it. I
can't speak for the mummy design. However, I know there's
(02:17):
a scene where yet he's attack, So I do kind
of want to watch it for that. Huh. I had
no idea that even existed. This is like from the
nineteen nineties Mummy franchise with a scorpion king and all that. Yeah,
this one was post scorpion king. And that's about all
I know about. Okay, Well, maybe we'll talk about that
one on trailer talk when we do a Facebook live
about these episodes this week. So in this episode, we're
(02:39):
going we're going to be exploring a practice that that
is tied directly to the Western Han dynasty and we're gonna,
I know a lot of you out there are not
gonna have a real firm handle on the dynastic Chinese history.
Don't worry. We're going to root all that where it
needs to be placed in the in the timeline a shortly.
(03:00):
But these suits are you know, we can call them
jade suits, we can call them jade armor. In the
In Mandarin, they're sometimes referred to as you shah, which
are jade caskets, or sometimes u y which are jade garments.
And it is essentially a stone garment if you think
about that, because because jade is a stone, and that's
(03:22):
probably a great place to start. Really, let's just discuss
what jade is before we pile on it's supernatural connotations
and then get into Chinese history. Alright, So jade is
essentially an ornamental green rock. Everyone has probably seen something
that he's either made of jade or is supposed to
(03:42):
be made of jade. But then what does that even mean? Yeah,
I'm thinking of like in the local mall that we
have here, there's like a couple like places where you
can buy sort of like Chinese themed aesthetic decorations for
the home, and usually there's like a piece of jade
in it somewhere, or it might be made of some
(04:04):
kind of fake jade. There's those um, I forget what
they're called, but they have they're like red uh ribbons
or um threads, and they've got a piece of jade
woven into them. Oh yeah. You often see little little
rings of jade, sometimes sometimes worn by by children in
China still or incorporated into some sort of direct decoration
(04:27):
or or personal adornment. And uh. The interesting thing here though,
is that whatever you're calling jade jade is the name
given to two distinct minerals uh neph right and jaded.
And in their purest form. Either of these is white
uh in uh. In Chinese, it's referred to as mutton
(04:47):
fat jade. And you also have minerals such as iron
and chromium that give jade it's mini hues. So there's
not just one color of jade. It's not like a crayola.
This is jade. Pulled it up to your stone and
see if it matches like a between white and like
very green, yeah, very in darker greens. Yeah. So let's
talk about these two varieties real quick. Uh. The nef
(05:10):
right is sometimes referred to as true jade. It's very strong,
it has a more vivid green coloration. And this is
the stuff that the Chinese worked with during the Han dynasty,
which is what we're gonna be talking about today, because
jadite wasn't introduced to China until the late sixteen hundreds
via Burma. So when we're talking about these pieces of
(05:30):
jade armor, they're made using nef right, not jadeite. Now. Jadite,
on the other hand, is more fragile, and it has
a brilliant gleaming surface when polished. Now, jade is usually
found inside pebbles or boulders, where like the rough stony
exterior doesn't really give a clue as to what's in there.
Jade itself, it can't be chipped or flaked, so it
(05:52):
has to be worn down using a rough paste and
a combination of rotary discs, grinders and tools. And during
the Han dynasty this was probably made. This paste was
made with water, grease, and sand, and then iron tools
had been developed specifically for the art and craft of
working with jade to develop and work it further into
(06:15):
various forms. Um. So I think this is a good
point for me to just bring up, Like I think
here in the West jade is sort of this very
like stereotypical attached idea to uh like the orient right,
very bound up in orientalism. Yeah. Like, do you remember
(06:37):
that video game came out gosh, must have been ten
fifteen years ago now, Jade Empire. I played the hell
out of that game. Oh was this that was just
a term based RPG. Yeah, it was made by the
same people who made the Knights of the Old Republic
games and the Dragon Age games. Very similar setup except
for this was in It had a really cool setting,
but it was like a steampunk mythological china um and
(07:01):
you know, as such, used very like kind of stereotypical
pieces from that mythology. But still, I mean, I have
to admit, as much as I love exploring uh Asian history,
I also love fantasy inspired by Asian so uh so
I should I should check it out a little bit.
I don't know. It's one of those where the graphics
(07:21):
don't really hold up. I mean, I haven't played it
and so long I think it was I played it
on the original Xbox But it was fun. You got
like this various group of characters. You would have I
think like three characters at a time that would go
on these like sort of dungeon crawl missions and like
one would be a spell It was very D and
D but it was like we've talked about this on
the show before, this sort of like racist Oriental Adventures
(07:44):
D and D where they would like, you know, you'd
have a spell caster, you'd have a warrior, and you'd
have like a ninja or something like that, and they
would like go there. It was really just like a fighter,
a rogue and a magic user um and yeah, they'd
have these various missions. They'd fight monsters from Chinese mythology. Yeah,
it was fun. Aesthetically so there's probably a little jade
(08:04):
in there. And oh yeah, yeah, I think that the
jade was a big theme in it. Yeah, well, jade
is is a big theme in uh in in Chinese traditions.
So we should probably discuss what it's supernatural powers were
thought to be. We've we've given a brief overview of
its physical properties. Certainly you can go in deeper if
(08:26):
you want to. We're not really a minerals podcast, but
there's a lot of great information out there about jade
if that's your thing. As as far as supernatural qualities go, yeah,
jade was believed to have protective and preservative qualities, warding
off both decay and evil spirits. I've also read that
some believe jade darkens as the wearer gets richer, this
(08:50):
picket poorer. So it's kind of like a mood ring
for your you know, your your financial status. That's great.
Instead of having like an app on your phone that
tells you how you're accounts doing, you just have like
a little piece of jade, like like on one of
those red wristbands. Yeah, you meet somebody you want to know,
uh where they stand, you just take a peek of
their jade. Now, it's also worth pointing out that in
(09:12):
terms of just how important jade is and Chinese tradition
and mythology, you have you D the Jade Emperor, and
he stands as the supreme god in the Chinese mythological pantheon.
And if you if you actually think back to the
episode on the Chinese zodiac that stuff to bow your
mind did a while back. Uh, there's this whole parable
(09:33):
of the swimming zodiac animals in a race, and they're
racing for the U D. Have you seen any of
those who movies about Dr D. I haven't. I'm familiar
with him by name, but I haven't watched their fun
You should take him out now. It's also important to
note that Dallas alchemists as well put put an emphasis
(09:55):
on jade as part of an immortality a lixir that
also contained gold, silver, arsenic, and other ores, and it
was said to provide resistance to aging and decay. In fact,
in the three twenty book Po Pozo, which means the
Master Embracing Simplicity, author Gee Hong wrote that gold and
(10:16):
jade inserted into the nine orifices prevented corpses from decaying. Okay,
so this comes up a lot today when we're talking
about this jade burial armor, and I wanna establish something here.
So I read this and I went, I had to
count my orifices, and I was like, I kept coming
up short. I only counted seven, and then I realized
(10:37):
they were counting the eyes. Yes, and it might sound
kind of grotesque to think of I plugs, but they're
not like corks the more like their little shields. It's
kind of like when cucumbers on the eye. Yeah. The
one I was going for was how they would put
coins on people's eyes that they could pay the ferryman
for the river Sharon. But yeah, this is obviously different mythology,
(11:01):
but it's the same principle. It's like little jade shields
that went over your eyes. So apparently I don't know
if I'm wrong or right, but I never thought of
my eyes as being orifices. Well, it's it's where the
light comes in, right, true, something's going in there now.
It's interesting I mentioned children wearing um jade bengals earlier
(11:22):
and you you still see this uh used in China.
And this is the idea here, is that this protects
the child from harm, including soul separating fright by a
demon and uh, I actually ran across the cool source
for this. So if we if we ever want to
do an episode on Chinese exorcism, uh, playing off our
past episodes on exorcism, this would be a good one
to to seek out. I think that's hard yes from me, audience,
(11:46):
let us know if you're interested in Chinese exorcism now.
In terms of other associations, uh, some traditional Chinese medicine
approaches call for the use of jade massaging tools to
help I was reading about using it on wrinkles on
the face. And there are also ingredients with jade in
the name in Chinese traditional medicine. They're not actually jade,
(12:07):
such as a jade windscreen powder. That's the just a
dried root of of a particular plant, but it has
nothing to do with the mineral itself. So even though
like we're well past this sort of you know myth
that jade has this ability to stave off the k
it's still used in a lot of those sort of
I guess homeopathic methodologies. Uh, Like I was reading about
(12:31):
the one of the ones, uh, the ancient Chinese jade
stone being used, Like I think they would like wrap
it around your neck and it was supposed to help
you with T M J. Yeah, I mean it's I mean,
ultimately it comes down to the idea that here is
this very beautiful, cool looking stone that came out of
the ground. Surely it's worth keeping around for something, right. Yeah.
(12:52):
It reminds me of hematite's there's similar stuff surrounding hemotite. Yeah,
but just I think in different cultures, and you know
a lot of this bleds in to and do other
cultures outside of China. I know, if you if you
happen to visit a Korean sauna, we have one of
these in the Atlanta era and n jaju um and
and I love going there. They have these various saunas
(13:12):
that sauna rooms that have different minerals there, and they
have one that has jade in it. And the idea
here is that quote jade increases metabolism, improves circulation, and
relieves arthritis pain. All right, now, this is giving me
an idea for a business, and I'm not very entrepreneurial,
so maybe somebody out there can start this. So you
combine the jade sauna idea with the floatation sensory deprivation tank,
(13:38):
and you build a sensory deprivation tank out of jade,
and then you climb inside that and you float in
salinated water for an hour. That would be amazing, because
that's what That's something that's kind of lacking with with
float tank scenarios is they are very they're very secular.
They could use a little um mystical spic. Yeah, that
(14:00):
would be fun. I'd do it. Yeah, plug plug our
orifices with give me nine pieces of jade. All right, Well,
before we get those nine pieces of jade, why don't
we take a quick break, and when we get back,
we're gonna give you a little bit of a rundown
on the Western Han dynasty. Alright, we're back. So I
(14:23):
realized Chinese dynastics secession can be confusing for folks. Uh
and and certainly especially if you're just going from zero,
trying to go to from zero to fifty on it. Uh,
It's it's a lot to take, I will admit. I mean,
as some listeners know, I spent time in China as
a kid. I learned Mandarin growing up, and I lived
in Singapore during high school, and Chinese history is completely
(14:47):
lost on me. It's really tough for me to keep
track of it. Yeah, I'm constantly referring back to the
chart with the with the dynasty's. Now. I know there's
a little song I've heard people sing this where it's
Fred Fred Jacka, except it's it's the different dynasties. I
have not heard that. I when I say i've heard it,
I've I've seen a video with two old white Chinese scholars, uh,
(15:11):
singing it to each other as an example of something
you learn in school when you're learning about Chinese sisters.
All right, so it's like a new moonic device. Yeah, okay,
so we're not gonna throw it all at you. Basically,
we're gonna go from the beginning up until the Han
dynasty just and and throughout the years, so you can
place it in the general time frame. And uh, the
(15:31):
Han dynasty is essentially the fourth or fifth dynasty or
the second Imperial Dynasty. It ultimately depends on what you
count as a dynasty. Uh. And and this has to
do with sort of a legendary mythic time. So let's
start from the beginning. First, up, you have the Shop dynasty.
This is seventy to six b C. And it's largely mythological,
(15:54):
with some very early Bronze Age evidence. So yeah, this
is the time of odds and heroes and so, and
this is why some don't actually count this in terms
of historical dynasties. But then comes the Shan Dynasty, and
this was long considered apocryphal, but his historians now correlated
with oracle Bone writings. This period takes us up to
(16:17):
roughly eleven twenty three b C. And the Joe dynasty.
Now this is the first millennium b C. And this
is a time of conflict in China. And there are
two periods here that are a particular note, and that's
the Spring and Autumn from seven eighty one b C
and the Warring States period four through to b C. Okay,
(16:39):
so what I'm seeing here so far is it seems
like these dynasties lasts, you know, roughly around five years. Yeah, yeah,
so far. Now, at the end of the Warring States period,
the Chin Dynasty begins, and this is when the Chin
Kingdom conquered other central Chinese states and became the first
truly impire, a real dynasty on their Chin Sha Hung
(17:02):
the first Emperor of China, and it was during this
rule that the Northern border Wall was implemented, what we
now call the Great Wall, and in the first of
many peasant uprisings to to echo through Chinese history, Lu
Bang rose up and conquered China to found finally the
Han dynasty and two oh six b c E. And
(17:25):
this was only you know, fifteen years later. Okay, So
this this is where we're zoning in on in terms
of this jade burial armor being created, right, But there's
obviously many dynasties afterwards. So yeah, the Han dynasty is
is big money early on, like this is uh, this
is again a time of things coming together, of unity.
Certainly there's still lots of lingering problems as with any
(17:47):
imperial scenario, but but it's it's a time where, uh,
where there's a there's enough there are enough riches out there,
there's enough specialization that you can have something like a
fancy funeral tradition take place. Now, overall, the Han dynasty
run ran from two O two or two oh six
BC until to c E, So we're talking about a
(18:11):
pretty long stretch here, uh, and that at the end
of this in to c that's when everything splits into
the three kingdoms. But we divided the Han dynasty up
into the first the former or Western Han dynasty, and
the and also the later or Eastern Han dynasty. And
that's because in the midst of this UH, this long
you know, four century stretch, you have a rebellion take
(18:34):
place and so and basically what happens is Han dynasty
official Wang Mang sees his power and UH and and
this is referred to as the Shin dynasty nine through
a d he does a pretty poor job, and then
the hans A reclaim power in twenty a d after
besieging the Imperial Palace. He dies in the process. So
(18:57):
in other words, you have two years of of Han rule.
But there's this one little period where a usurper like
a like a twenty year period or actually less than
twenty years of this one guy ruling and then just
getting taken down. So again this is an influential four
centuries in Chinese history saw the institution of Confucian norms,
(19:19):
the roots of the imperial examination system UH, the an
age of great economic, technological, cultural, and social progress. Hans
still refers to the main Chinese ethnic group. And this
is again also the period that gives us these these
amazing jade burial suits. Okay, so we've teased enough. What's
a jade burial suit? Because I think when I first
(19:41):
heard about this, my thought was that it was like
Iron Man, and it was, but Iron Man made of jade,
and that's not correct. There's thousands of little pieces and
these things. Yeah, it's between two thousand and four thousand
of these little jade pieces, all of its sewn together,
and it's sewn together depending on your station, it might
be gold, silver, or silk. So really the suit description
(20:07):
is probably better. This is a a suit made for
a corpse, and it's a suit made of maybe in
you know, mostly stone, and maybe gold and silver or
silk as well. I can't imagine that a living person
could wear one of these and move. It would be
incredibly heavy. Yeah, only a supernatural, um, you know, undead
(20:27):
being in Hollywood movie could do it. Now. We referred
back to our episode on ghost burial earlier, and I
do want to touch on on that real quick because
one of a couple of the ideas we discussed in
there are central to understanding why this much care was
was taken, uh, you know, for a dead individual. So
we we discussed the importance of si Yao, the flyle
(20:53):
pity and Chinese tradition is rooted in Dallas to philosophy
Confucian family values, and it concerns the undying nature of
the human soul. You know, the dead live on in
the afterlife. Uh. And then they're also tied to this
Chinese notion of of of structural completeness, right that you
have this this basic unity of the family and if everything,
(21:13):
if anything is out of out of place there, it's
going to cause disharmony in your life and potentially in
the afterlife. Yeah, we went into far greater detail on
this in the Ghost Burial episode, but I wanted to
reference a USA Today article that was specifically about the
jade burial suits and how it referred to this to
for Western readers. So it claims that tombs in general
(21:37):
were thought to be portals between the living and the dead.
And basically the concept was, and this is similar to
what we went over and Ghost Burial, the soul was divided.
There's one part of the soul that goes to heaven,
the other part stays in the body, and the one
that's in the body had to be appeased or else
it would turn evil, while the one that goes to
heaven acted on behalf of the loved ones by offering
(21:58):
them either protection or good for fortune. And this is
why the living tried to ensure that the deceased were
well provided for in death. So you get very similar
death rituals to the Egyptians in that, like people are
buried with their things, with things that they think will
keep them comfortable. Yeah, there's this this this mix though
(22:19):
with the the ancestor of veneration that it's not only
is this somebody that deserved a proper burial and deserves
to be you know, buried and with the things that
they love. This is also someone who can speak on
your behalf in the afterlife, Like, this is an important
contact to happen. So you want them to be happy,
you want to do right by them. So the very
first one of these suits, which is part of that,
(22:41):
was documented in literature around a d. Three twenty. But
that's documented in literature. We didn't find them until far afterward. Yeah,
it wasn't until nineteen fifty eight that the suit hypothesis
here that that these little j pieces were we were
finding were part of the jade suit. You know, it
(23:02):
was just a theory at the time, and uh, it
wasn't until we actually found a really undisturbed tomb nine
in ninety two Tombs and Heavy and this is where
we found tombs undisturbed by looters or mining efforts. And
it resulted in two complete, recovered and restored suits of
jade armor. And this is quite a story. And if
(23:22):
you've you know, well we're going to talk about this,
but museums here in the United States have had these
suits one or the other, brought around on tour basically, right,
And so it's possible that you've actually seen one of
these sort of restructured and put on display in a
museum here in the West. But uh, that's weird to me.
(23:45):
I'll talk about it more later after we get through it,
but I think it's a little it's it seems slightly
offensive to me, especially given the nature of why it
was built in the first place. Now you mentioned restored,
and that's key because if you see one of these
new museum on display, it is almost assuredly been toward
because despite the ideas tied up with jade, jade doesn't
(24:05):
or at least the jade suit as it was executed,
does not actually preserve the body, so the body ends
up rotting away. There's nothing left but bone. The suit collapses,
and then sometimes the casket collapses as well on top
of it, so everything has to be put back together.
Now you actually have seen one, right, Uh? Yeah, I
think I've seen a couple. But the one that I
(24:26):
got to see in China is the one that impressed
me the most. It was at the Museum of the
Western Han Dynasty, Mausoleum of the Nanyu King and Guang Show.
So I was there with my wife, my my my
newly acquired son. He was not impressed at all. As
I strolled him around in the stroke he was like
(24:47):
two or three, he was like he was one and
a half. He was not having any of it. But
but the tumb was was really impressive for me anyway. Uh.
It was a hidden twenty meters at six ft underground
and the king himself was covered with with a with
a silk and two thousand, two d ninety one pieces
(25:08):
of jade to compose his suit, and the whole tomb
really had the feel of just a cosmic vessel, and
that this was the suit of a of a necronot
you know. Uh, yeah, but very much in keeping with
with the feeling that I get from from any kind
of Egyptian artifacts. Now a number of other such jade
suits accompanied by hordes of silks, lacquer ware, figurines, and bronzes.
(25:32):
You'll find these displayed in many Chinese museums. Uh. They
turn up, as you pointed out, in an international collections
and traveling exhibits h and A Night three count from
the Institute of Archaeology and Beijing claimed ten thousand Han
tombs had been discovered, and this resulted in twenty tombs
with twenty three jade suit remain. All right, we're gonna
(25:54):
take a quick break and then when we come back,
we'll jump right back into it. All right, we're back.
So one of the things that I was reading was
that at the time that these were being made, and
this goes along with our episode on Egyptian mummification. I mean,
this was a process. It wasn't just like they had
jade's suits ready to go right. Um. These suits would
(26:17):
have taken the most skilled of jade smith's over ten
years to make. So they were either building them before
the person died or the person died, they were probably
embombed in some way, and then the suit was built
around them ten years after they had passed away. Now,
(26:38):
as should be obvious from that ten thousand tombs twenty three,
jade's suit remains UH figure there. These were not for everybody.
These were specifically for members of the Han aristocracy, because ultimately,
who else is going to afford a low luxury burial
item like this UH the the work Juhans show or
(26:58):
the Book of the lay or Han. The Chinese court
document from this time explained that your your rank determined
what sort of jade's suit you were well suited for. UH.
Emperors had gold threaded jade suits, vassal kings, high ranking
imperial concubines and princesses had jade suits with silver thread,
and dowager concupines and sisters of the emperor lesser aristocrats
(27:22):
had suits with copper threat. I wouldn't be offended to
wear a copper one, No I would. I would. I'd
be happy with with with copper or kin. If anybody
needs a dowager concubine, call me now. Sometimes there were
added decorations. Emperor Woo's suit was decorated with imagery of
the flood dragon and other sacred creatures, and this is
(27:42):
referred to as the flood dragon jade suit, but a
lot of them are going to be you know, featureless
polished jade. Yeah. One thing to remember here too, is
like we're thrown down in terms of gold and silver
and copper, is that jade was more valuable in China
then gold or silver was in the West and jade crafting,
as we mentioned earlier, it achieved its height during the
(28:02):
reign of Emperor Chien long Uh, and that was from
seventeen thirty six to seventeen nineve CE. He actually made
all jade in the country his private property, and the
idea was that if anybody tried to trade jade, it
was punishable by death because he he owned it all,
regardless of whether or not it was actually in his possession.
(28:23):
Now this ties in nicely with the next point, and
that's that evidence supports the theory that this was a
There was probably a centralized place or a couple of
places for manufacturing these suits. Um artisans would work on
what was again essentially a luxury item, So you can't
just go anywhere and get a jade suit, and um
and while these they still couldn't today, Yeah, I mean,
(28:44):
unless unless you know a guy. Um. It's also worth
noting that while these items were for specific members of
Han aristocracy, there were violations, including an account and this
was shared in a in a paper that will will
side in the landing page by Jeffrey Ko and Yang
Joe Shing. And this was the tale of a eunuch
(29:04):
named Joo Jong who secretly buried his father in a
jade suit. But then he was found out, and so
the casket was opened up uh and um and busted out,
and his entire family was imprisoned for the for the
for the crime. Think about that, I mean, like, given
how difficult these things are to make, Like somehow you
secretly had one of those, made you bury your dad
(29:25):
in it, and then you're found out and caught and
just like utterly punished for it. That's that's that's a story, yeah,
I mean, and it shows how how how important all
of this was to the culture at the time. You know,
this was this is not just you couldn't just be
frivolous and get a jade suit. No, the jade suit
was for particular members of society and to violate uh,
(29:48):
those those societal divisions. Was was a dire matter. Now
we mentioned earlier how in the in the late nineteen
fifties you had this hypothesis these little jade pieces everyone
was finding, we're, we're, we're bits of a jade suit.
But that it wasn't until night when they found those
two tombs and heavy. This is when we actually had evidence.
(30:09):
We actually had two complete, recovered and ultimately restored suits
of jade armor and UH. In particular, they were lushing
printaging of the Kingdom of jeong Shan. So this was
the son of the Western Han Emperor Jing and his
consort dal Juan. Now, while their bodies were undisturbed, the
(30:29):
corpses had collapsed, the casket had collapsed, but everything was
still in place. He had gold thread, she had silk.
His suit contained two thousand four jade pieces, hers contained
at two thousand, one hundred sixty And in both suits,
the only the outer surfaces were polished and the inner
surfaces were scarred by circular cutting tools and straight edge tools,
(30:52):
the very tools that you referred to earlier for the
shaping of jade. Yeah, and while the jade you know,
didn't protect their bodies from decomposition as was thought. The
porous rock that was actually in this this I guess
cave is the best way to describe it did have
absorbed of capabilities. When they were found in nineteen archaeologists
had to work through get this two brick walls and
(31:16):
a thick plate of molten iron that had been poured
between them. And this is obviously because of how bad
the grave robbing thing had become and and partially why
this one was hadn't been robbed yet, you know. Uh,
So they had to work their way through this. Lu
Sheng's body had those jade plugs that we talked about earlier.
(31:36):
He had him in his nose, ears, and mouth, and
then the little jade shields for his eyes. They also
each had guilt bronze headrests that were inlaid with jade,
and they held jade crescents in their hand. Now, the
coffin that was found on the floor that was made
of four thousand pieces of jade, and it had just
completely fallen apart into a pile on the Tumbe floor.
(31:57):
There were also lots of sculptures. As we mentioned earlier,
they they've they've placed lots of little items around too
that we're also made of jade, including those of a Bixie,
which was a mythological powerful winged beast that averted evil,
and I included a picture in here. It's kind of
it's kind of like a dragon. It's like a cross
between like a dragon and a dog with it's got wings. Yeah.
(32:19):
I keep wanting to do like a full exploration as
if such a thing were possible, of of Chinese dragons,
because there's so many different varieties and there are a
lot of things where you look at them and you think, oh, well,
that's a dragon or that's kind of a dragon turtle.
But they all have very particular identities and symbol and
symbolic power like you would and it would depend where
(32:40):
you would want to engrave one or include a statue
of one, if you would protect certain certain structures. You know.
I think I pronounced that pinion wrong too, because I
just went with Bixie because it looks like it rhymes
with pixie, but I think it's supposed to be be
she Okay, So I look at it looks like a
Bixie when I can imagine his name Dambixie. It Hey,
(33:00):
there's the pokemon of their time. I mean, this thing
looks pretty cool. It's it's kind of like a fat
chested dragon dog. Indeed, Now, obviously, when we when we
look at the jade burial suits, we're looking at the
convergence of two different customs, burial in armor and the
sacred use of jade. So there are plenty of examples
of of of just normal decorative armor suits that were
(33:24):
worn by bodies prior to this. And uh, the actually
the prince that we just referred to, I believe he
was buried with a suit of armor. Uh, and the
suit of armor was actually a more modern design, but
he was but that was just included with him, and
he was actually buried, of course in the jade armor.
Now my understanding is these two in particular that we're
(33:45):
referring to, these are the ones that are touring around
the world and you can see them in various museum locations. Yes,
I believe so. Alright, so you're probably wondering, well, then,
what happens to the jade suits Like this is a
pretty fantastic to issue. Why does it fade away? Why
does something so rich and so ornate just vanish? And
(34:06):
the answer is interesting that the answering. The answer has
to do with all of those plundered tombs. It's all
about grave robbing. Yeah, and this was fascinating and disturbing
as well when we read what the the the the
the tomb raiders would do with the suits when they
pilfered them. Yeah, there were more than two dozen suits
(34:27):
that have been discovered since nine eight. But the reason
why there aren't more is because in a d. Two
hundred and twenty three, Emperor when of Way, ordered that
the production of them had to be stopped because of
so much looting. And what would happen is these looters
would go in and they would burn the suits solely
so they could retrieve the gold thread that was within.
(34:49):
They didn't care about the jade. And as you pointed
out off air, well, if you had these little pieces
of jade that were perfectly cut down to make a suit,
you can't go sell that on the black market because
somebody is gonna know, oh, oh, this must have come
from the specific suit, from the specific prints. But gold
you can melt down in turn and whatever you want,
so you can always come up with a story about
that gold. But those jade pieces were clearly stolen from
(35:13):
an important person's body and you might as well just
walk around with a sign and Mandarin that says execute
me now. You You refer back earlier to the poorest
nature of the jade, and there is this this idea
that is put out there that even though the jade
does not have any magical body preserving properties, and you know,
(35:36):
despite the fact that no soft tissue has been been
found preserved by these funeral rights, uh, it has been
suggested that this the poorest nature of the stone itself
might actually preserve some genetic material and that you know,
d NA might be found intermixed with the jade. A
lot of accounts of this notion refer back to a
(35:58):
piece of title Immortal Jade by Sherry uh to Lynco
and this was published in the Canadian Medical Journal. But
to my knowledge, there's been no actual evidence for this
thus far. Okay, but I could see why it would
be an interesting avenue of research, Like there's some possibilities
for genealogical research, especially you know, you mentioned the Han
(36:19):
ethnic group earlier. Related to that, that could be some
interesting stuff if you're looking at DNA samples. Yeah. I
think one of the problems there is that is that
that we do have uh tombs and graves from the
Han dynasty that we're able to study and get genetic
information from. So it's not like these would be the
one place we would find it. Yeah, and this so
(36:41):
this leads into my I know I mentioned this earlier,
but it's just it seems really weirdly offensive that these
relics are kind of pulled out of where they were kept,
trotted out across the world and displayed in museums. I
remember the High Museum here in Atlanta had the terra
Cotta warriors a couple of years years ago, and they
were very cool. But the so my understanding was those
(37:05):
Terracatta warriors were buried with, you know, someone very much
like these Jade's suits were, and I felt similar then.
I don't know. I suppose if they didn't do this,
the tombs would eventually be looted by somebody. But to me,
I guess the idea more along the lines of what
you saw when you were in China is you go
to the actual site itself and you see them that
(37:25):
is at least like sort of compromising. You're allowing them
to keep these suits that they uh that they believed
we're going to protect them in the afterlife. Yeah, I mean,
I guess this gets to do a more complicated issue
and and and it it's gonna vary, you know, from
culture to culture and depending how far back in time
you're going. Because I it this instantly makes me think
(37:46):
back to when I was at the Field Museum in Chicago.
Instantly we went up there for C two e two
and Joe and I went over there, and they have
a wonderful Native American section, a lot of it devoted
to Northwest coast, a Native pe bowls and uh, you know,
they have masks, they have costumes, details about their various
you know, rich um spiritual traditions. But there's a section
(38:09):
that they've completely um marked off. You can't see into
it anymore because they're display depicts, uh important artifacts from
their funeral rights. So okay, yeah, okay. So somewhere along
the line, like maybe that tribe and its current iteration
said we're uncomfortable with this, please don't do it. Yeah,
so it's like a current people saying this is we
(38:30):
find this to be disrespectful, needs to be handled in
a more appropriate manner. I'd be curious if there's if
there's anyone in China who feels that way about this stuff,
or if it's just kind of like they've moved past
that uh veneration for this particular dynasty and they're okay
with you know, sending them around the world and having
(38:51):
them looked at because I guess in a way it
spreads Chinese culture. Yeah, yeah, it's curious. Well, if you're
a listener out there and you have any idea, maybe
you've lived in China or your Chinese yourself, please let
us know. I'd be curious indeed. So so there you
have it. Hopefully we've provided a decent snapshot of another
just really interesting funeral tradition, uh A an artistic tradition,
(39:16):
a time period, a little about the mineral and the
possibility of some sort of genetic material actually being preserved
by this, uh this supernaturally infused funeral. Right now, I
guess some people are probably thinking that I'm a bit
of a hypocrite because I started off the episode saying
I would love to see a movie about a jade
(39:36):
burial suited mummy, But at the same time I kind
of am uncomfortable about actually looking at the real thing. So,
you know, I'd be curious if you If you've got
any information about this that we missed, please let us know.
You can reach out to us on social media. We're
on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram. If you've seen these before
(39:56):
and you've got details that you want to let us
know about, please tell us that too, or maybe in
some pictures that would be cool. Uh do you wear jade?
If you wear, let's share any kind of you know,
supernatural ideas that you carry around with it. And then
you can always visit our website, which is Stuff to
Blow your Mind dot com. That's right, that's where you'll
find uh. All the podcasts, including several of these we've mentioned,
(40:19):
the Chinese immortality, the ghost marriage, that various mummification episodes,
the Chinese zodiac, all of those are there, and we'll
trying to include links on the landing page for this episode.
And if you just want to write us the old
fashioned way, whether it's in English or Mandarin, you can
write us at blow the Mind at how stuff works
dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
(40:50):
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