The murals are divided into two parts:

On the walls of ramp, the lower section of walls of courtyard, corridor, and main chamber, the paintings illustrate Lou Rui’s military career and life scenes before his death;

On the upper walls of corridor, courtyard, chambers and gates, those paintings depict the illusory fantasy in which the tomb owner ascended to heaven and returned to the Western Pure Land after death.

The painting topics at that time could be divided into three categories: one is classic stories, second is folk realistic stories, and the third is mythology stories. Royal and noble families specially emphasize on classic stories in order to educate and civilize people. So most of figure paintings in these families have such content. Screens are also a great platform for such stories. This lacquer painting is a typical example, showing most stories about exemplar women.

Weeks ago in the previous post of this “Forbidden Treasure” series, I introduced a pair of lacquer clogs from Zhu Ran Tomb of Three Kingdom Period. Today, I am going to show you another “Forbidden Treasure” from the same tomb: A lacquer plate with a painting of noble life.

Tomb of Zhu Ran was discovered in Jun, 1984. It has been hidden underground for more than 1,700 years. Although this tomb has been raided before, there are still 140+ pieces of burial objects left, most of which are lacquered wood objects.

Before Zhu Ran lacquer clogs were unearthed, the earliest lacquer clogs were generally believed to be invented by Japanese. The discovery of Zhu Ran lacquer clogs suggests that lacquer clogs might be invented in China, spread east to Japan through Tang culture, and gradually adapted by Japanese.

This also indicates that as early as Three Kingdoms Period, there were already close economical and cultural exchanges between China and Japan.

This is a bronzeware cooking vessel made by State of Chu, in Warring States Period. It was unearthed at Tomb of King of Chu in Zhujiaji, Shou, Anhui Province.

Shou, aka Shouchun in ancient times, served as the last capital city of State of Chu for 19 years. There are rich relics buried in this region. This tripod is one of the most precious ones. Zhuke Ding is the top second national treasure bronze ding unearthed in China so far. Its size and weight are only after Simuwu Tetrapod.