Posted by echowangxian
The General Sacred Way\ Dingling Underground Palace\ Changling Ling'en Dian which is made of Nanmu
It was so quite when I walking on the Sacred Way, touching those vivid stone statues, imaging how powerful of the Emperors used to be. but now the owners all gone for handreds years, only those stone statues left...
The Underground Palace of Dingling is the only one of the Ming tombs excavated so far. More than 3,000 pieces of cultural relics were unearthed from Dingling. tourist can see some of them in Dingling Museum, i was totally crazy for those real Gold ingot\ Gold crown\ Jade belt\ Jade cup\ Jade bowl...b4 can only see them on TV series.
the last thing is the Ling'en Dian of Changling, it made of Nanmu (a kind of rare hard wood). and its the only remains of the hall-and-gate structures among the Ming Mausoleums, and deseve to be the treasure of ancient Chinese architecture. As i know how rare Nanmu is, and how expensive are they in ancient time, when i saw the big hall full of Nanmu, i even forgot to close my mouth. it is amazing hall!
Posted by Hugh2004a
I went to the tomb located where the Dingling Museum is. The grounds were the most impressive part to me. The tomb itself was pretty average. There were ramps up and down the stairs in the courtyard, but I didn't see an elevator in the tomb itself. It was about 8 flights of stairs down. The walk to the tomb isn't hard or long, about 15 minutes. I didn't go into the big museum, but did go into the little one in the 2nd courtyard where several artifacts are displayed. That was pretty interesting - you can see several of the items that were excavated from the tombs. Take the walk along the wall surrounding the tomb, it has really nice views of the mountains. If you are short on time, you could safely skip this attraction and not miss much, other than nice courtyards and the views.