The Eastern Qing tombs at Zunhua: five emperors in one valley

The spirit way of Xiaoling runs north from a stone archway. It passes pairs of dismounting stelae, a grand palace gate, a hall for changing clothes, a pavilion over a stele recording the emperor's merits, and a line of stone sculptures, then a dragon-and-phoenix gate and a sequence of bridges, one arch, seven arches, five arches, before the three-way three-arch bridges and a flat bridge bring it to the tomb.

Beyond the gate the palace section repeats the order of an imperial residence: a stele pavilion, halls for court officials east and west, the Long'en Gate, sacrificial burners, side halls, and the Long'en Hall, the Hall of Enormous Grace, where offerings were made. After it come the gate of the burial chamber, a two-pillar gate, stone altar pieces, a square city, a memorial tower, a glazed screen, a crescent city and the precious citadel, a grassed mound with the underground palace beneath. To the left of the palace section, behind its own wall, stand the offering kitchens where the sacrificial food was cooked, the warehouses that stored it, and a slaughterhouse for the oxen and sheep.

The finest burial chamber is at Yuling, the tomb of the Qianlong Emperor: nine vaults in a row, separated by four solid marble doors, at a depth of 54 metres. Every wall, ceiling and door carries Buddhist imagery, the four heavenly kings, the eight bodhisattvas and twenty-four Buddhas, with more than 30,000 words of Tibetan and Sanskrit scripture. The doors themselves weigh three tonnes each.

Shunzhi, the first Qing emperor to rule China, was buried here first, and every later tomb in the valley follows the plan of his. Xiaoling was prepared from 1661, begun in 1663 and substantially finished in August 1664, with the outbuildings complete by 1668. Timber for it was obtained by dismantling two halls built under the Ming in the lake enclosure north-west of the Forbidden City, the Qingfu Hall and the Jinfang Pavilion.

The valley holds five emperors. Kangxi lies at Jingling, begun in 1676 and finished in 1681; his is the first Qing imperial tomb to use earth burial, the first where an empress was interred before the emperor, and the first to take an imperial consort into the same enclosure. Qianlong chose the site of Yuling in 1742 and building began the next year; the main works were done by 1752, and the square city, memorial tower, citadel and side halls were added between 1755 and 1762. Xianfeng lies at Dingling and Tongzhi at Huiling.

One emperor is missing. Daoguang began a tomb here, then abandoned it when water seeped into the burial chamber, and moved his remains to the Western Qing tombs at Yixian in Baoding. The structures already built were taken down and re-erected there. Two of his sons and two of his daughters stayed behind, in the tomb known as the Tomb of the Princess.

The tombs were looted in the twentieth century. In 1928 troops under the warlord Sun Dianying broke into the tombs of Qianlong and the Empress Dowager Cixi; other tombs were opened in the 1940s and 1950s. Only Shunzhi's Xiaoling was left untouched. The burial chambers of four tombs are open to visitors: Qianlong's, Cixi's, and those of two of Qianlong's consorts.

Cixi's tomb, Ding Dongling, is the most conspicuously decorated. Its Long'en Hall and the two side halls are built of red wood, painted with gold-glazed patterns, with gilded dragons and carved stone balustrades; the terrace spouts are carved as water-loving dragons, and the interior is dark wood painted in gold. The main hall now holds reproductions of photographs taken in 1903 in Cixi's own studio in the Summer Palace.

Zhaoxiling, the tomb of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, Shunzhi's mother, stands east of the entrance to his spirit way. Kangxi had a temporary resting hall built there at her wish, and in 1725, under Yongzheng, it was converted into a mausoleum.

The whole complex covers 80 square kilometres, ringed by the Changrui, Jinxing, Huanghua and Yingfei Daoyang mountains. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2000 together with the Western Qing tombs, as one property in two sites, and it lies 125 kilometres north-east of Beijing in Zunhua, Tangshan. It is the largest, most complete and best preserved imperial mausoleum complex in China.