Cixi died a year before burial, the funeral procession stinks, where does the smell come from?

The Chinese have retained and passed on the culture of choosing a lucky day since ancient times until today, which means picking a suitable time to do something, sometimes even in space. To take a very obvious example, Tanabata is regarded as the Valentine's Day of the East, and on this day there is always a very long queue at civil affairs bureaus all over the country. As a matter of common sense, this day is no different from any other, but the vast majority of people want to get a good luck.

This culture of choosing good fortune is applied to ancient burials in a much more elaborate form. The four elements necessary to do something are the subject, the object, the space and the time. If these four elements are applied to the burial, the subject is the deceased, the object is the coffin of the deceased and the burial goods, the space is the location of the deceased, and the time is the specific date of burial. Because of the influence of the culture of choosing good fortune, so those ancient dignitaries, always build luxurious tombs, with good coffins, but also placed a large number of funerary objects inside, and then invited feng shui masters to look at a suitable location, and ultimately finalized a lucky day, before being buried.

As you can see, in ancient China, a person was not buried soon after his death, but had to go through a series of complicated procedures. For example, Cixi, the de facto ruler of China's ancient late Qing Dynasty, had a burial process full of twists and turns. Cixi was buried a year after her death, and it was very rare in ancient China for her body to be parked for such a long period of time, which was not in line with the customs of our traditional culture, but perhaps because Cixi was a Manchu, she was not restricted by it. In addition to Cixi's funeral procession stinks, the smell is in the end how to come?

We can learn through the "Ai Yuexuan Notes" that Empress Dowager Cixi's tomb was so luxurious that the clothes she wore alone had nearly 10,000 jewels. The tomb ceremony of Empress Dowager Cixi was already extremely luxurious in terms of items, so the next thing to consider is the exact time of burial and the location of the burial, that is, if the zodiacal auspicious day selected is far away from the date of Cixi's passing away, then one can only wait in place.

The reason why the date of burial is so difficult to pick is because ancient emperors or actual rulers like Empress Dowager Cixi could not simply pick a zodiacal date, and dates of such status were generally reserved for the civil dignitaries or important court officials. For someone of Cixi's status to pick a suitable date for her burial, in addition to inviting a magician to observe the signs of the heavens, she would also have to combine them with Cixi's birthdate and eight characters.

So although there are 365 days in a year, it is still very difficult to get an accurate date after such harsh conditions. The cumbersome burial procedure of Empress Dowager Cixi also had a lot to do with the context of the times. If it is a peaceful world, or a few hundred years ago in ancient Chinese society, the burial does not need to be so cumbersome, generally in the new emperor ascended the throne, has begun to work on the construction of their own mausoleum, for the aftermath of the well-prepared.

Building a mausoleum for oneself while one is still alive was actually a very common thing in ancient times. Whether it was Qin Shi Huang, who unified the six kingdoms, or Emperor Wu of Han, who fought against the Xiongnu, they both started building tombs for themselves while they were still alive, even though they had been trying to hope for immortality during their reigns. That said, when the country was stable and strong, emperors often had plenty of time and money to build a vast and luxurious tomb for themselves, so in ancient times in China, the emperor's tomb often took more than a decade to build.

In addition to building tombs earlier, when new emperors ascended to the throne, they would already seek out professional feng shui masters to find a suitable burial site for themselves as well as the date of their burial after death. Therefore most of these rulers were still in their 3rd or 40th year when they had already made thorough preparations for the aftermath. So after a few decades, when they die, they don't waste a lot of unnecessary time.

But Empress Dowager Cixi obviously did not have such luck. This is because although she was the de facto ruler of the late Qing court, she was like Empress Lu during the Han Dynasty, who held great power in her hands but never claimed the title of emperor, and her own status was at best limited to that of empress dowager, not emperor. This also means that there are a lot of things that the emperor can only do, although they hold great power in their hands, but due to the limitations of etiquette, there is no way to implement, restricting their hands and feet, which is a great limitation, so that Cixi in the later years of life there is no way to properly account for their own aftermath.

In addition to this, we have to take into account the context of the late Qing Dynasty. As we all know, ancient China has been on a downhill path since the middle of the Qing Dynasty, until 1840, with the outbreak of the Opium War, so that China was forced to open the closed door, becoming a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. That is to say from this period onwards, China's overall strength is declining, which also limits the daily spending of the palace.

While the palace forces, led by Empress Dowager Cixi and others, did their best to raid the world's property. But with the signing of one after another unequal treaties, China's silver outflow, become other countries change the law to strengthen the funding, in such a cycle, the late Qing dynasty completely become the rulers of the foreigners, coupled with the Eight-Power Allied Forces invasion of China, so that we have almost no money available, the Empress Dowager Cixi even if you want to build a mausoleum ahead of time, but also can only be the heart but not enough power.

It is for this reason, so that Cixi as well as the emperor Guangxu's mausoleum construction than the late emperor for a long time, if Cixi can narrow the regulation of their own mausoleum, to reduce the mausoleum inside the burial goods, but also to speed up the construction of the mausoleum. But obviously, like Cixi such as military expenses to build a back garden, in this aspect is impossible to give in. Therefore, Empress Dowager Cixi's mausoleum was built for a long time, and even in the twenty-first year of Emperor Guangxu, Empress Dowager Cixi ordered it to be re-expanded once more.

The day after the death of Emperor Guangxu, Empress Dowager Cixi died. However, Cixi was not buried until a year after her death, one reason is that Empress Dowager Cixi's underground palace had not been completely constructed, and the other main reason is that it is still relatively far away from the auspicious day of the zodiac for the burial. On the one hand there was the place, on the other hand there was the time, and at this time an irreconcilable conflict arose between the two. Obviously there is a good date, from the Empress Dowager Cixi's date of death is a little shorter, but due to the underground palace is not completed, so only able to skip this date, wait until the completion of the construction of the underground palace, and then wait until the day dedicated to the burial, has already passed a year time.

In ancient times there was no such thing as today's embalming technology, and there was less sophistication in the disposal of corpses. This also meant that it was almost impossible for a dead body to remain undecayed. After the death of Empress Dowager Cixi, according to limited historical records, the palace bought a large number of spices to cover the smell emanating from the body, and also stored a large number of ice cubes to protect Cixi's body.

While these two methods, so that the body of the Empress Dowager Cixi got a limited degree of protection, but the biggest difficulty is not here, in the back of the body transportation. Will Cixi Empress Dowager's body transportation to Dingdong Mausoleum in the process, the funeral procession stench, in the end, what is the reason? This is because, the Empress Dowager Cixi's body a year without burial, itself has been damaged to a considerable extent, but due to a thick coffin blocking, the smell can not be completely emitted, the reason why the funeral procession has a pungent stench, mainly because of the large number of the funeral procession, and of course, a large number of mules and horses and other livestock.

These livestock in the process of marching randomly defecate, resulting in everywhere dirty, which makes the funeral procession through the smoky odor.