Chinese archaeologists recently found a brick-and-stone moat and an underground passage outside the eastern wall surrounding the famous Xiaoling, the mausoleum of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), Zhu Yuanzhang.
The moat is about 200 meters long and is as much as eight meters wide in the widest part. Built with titanic bars of stone, the moat impressed the archaeologists.
The underground passage, 1.5 meters high, is believed to be older than the walls of the mausoleum which was first built in 1381.
Archaeologists also discovered quite a few yellow-colored building parts like tiles that are made of colored glaze. Those parts, even greater in number than the total of previously found, shown that the mausoleum palace was once covered with tiles.
The discovery of the moat further proves that the building of mausoleums for the afterlife of emperors had imitated the structure of palaces for the living, experts said.
(People's Daily 03/05/2001)
