Tomb of King Rencheng: A passive consumption downgrade of the princes 2,000 years ago

Tomb of King Rencheng is located in the south of Xiaowangzhuang Village, Rencheng District, Jining City. It is 790 meters long from north to south and 800 meters wide from east to west. There were originally nine tombs, which the locals called "Nine Women's Tombs" (legend has it that they were the tombs of nine female generals of the Yang family led by Mu Guiying). Due to human destruction and soil erosion, only four of them with burial mounds remain, and the remaining five have been razed to the ground and are numbered M1 to M9. M1 is on the north side of Jining Infectious Disease Hospital; M2 is about 600 meters southeast of Xiaowangzhuang Village. It was dug up by local villagers in the 1960s and the tomb was severely damaged. Now only the burial mound remains. A large number of cultural relics were unearthed, but they have also been completely lost and destroyed; M3 is located in the southeast of the village, now in the Air Force yard. The burial mound is about 6 meters high and 40 meters in diameter at the bottom; M4 is located about 400 meters south of the village. The burial mound is 6 meters high and 40 meters in diameter at the bottom; M5 is located in the southeast corner of the Infectious Disease Hospital; M6 is near the hospital morgue; the burial mounds of M7, M8 and M9 are no longer there and are located on the northwest and northeast sides of M3. 🔅During the Han and Wei dynasties, Jining once established the "Rencheng State". Based on the tomb structure and unearthed cultural relics, it has been verified that it is the tomb of the kings of the Rencheng State in the Eastern Han Dynasty. In 2006, the tomb complex was announced as a national key cultural relic protection site. 🔅The tomb No. 1 is open to the public. According to historical records, it was well preserved at least during the Ming Dynasty. The existing mound has a base diameter of 50 meters and a height of 10 meters. It is the largest mound in the tomb group and is called "Da'oudui". The Jining City Cultural Relics Bureau excavated it from 1992 to 1995. 🌼The tomb faces north and south, and consists of a burial mound, a tomb passage, an ear chamber, a tomb door, a corridor, a front chamber, a back chamber, a corridor, and a stone wall. 🌟The owner of the tomb is Liu Shang, the first King of Rencheng in the Eastern Han Dynasty (84-101 AD). Xiaowangzhuang Village, more than 10 meters behind the tomb, may have been passed down orally and was derived from the corruption of the word "filial piety". The lineage of King Rencheng is: King Xiao Liu Shang, King Zhen Liu An, King Jie Liu Chong, Liu Bo, and Liu Tuo. The Xiaowangzhuang Tombs are most likely the burial area for five kings including Liu Shang, King Xiao of Rencheng, and their concubines. 🔅The King of Rencheng inscribed his tomb with stone, which was called Huangchang Stone. Huangchang Stone was popular in the vertical pit tombs of princes in the early Eastern Han Dynasty and developed from the Huangchang Wood in the Western Han Dynasty. After the Western Han Dynasty, with the rise of brick chamber tombs and stone chamber tombs, the wooden structure of Huangchangtichou burial system gradually withdrew from the stage of history. However, as a high-level burial system, Huangchangtichou was still valued by the royal family. It may also be because of the shortage of mature Huangchang wood. In the Eastern Han Dynasty, there was a change in using stone instead of wood to build the coffin chamber. 🌼The stone materials of Rencheng King’s Tomb come from Jiaxiang County, 10 kilometers away from the King’s Tomb. The stones are of uniform size and neatly hammered, with geometric patterns carved on all four sides. There are 782 stone inscriptions visible in the tomb chamber, with more than 4,000 words on them, written by more than 50 calligraphers and engravers. Before carving, it is usually not written in red, but carved by a stonemason with a drill. Because there were many engravers, the styles of writing and engraving are diverse. Its style is mostly practical writing commonly seen among the people in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and it represents the mainstream of folk writing at that time. It has important physical value for studying the development and evolution of Chinese characters and the history of calligraphy art.