Outside of Beijing is an area where the Ming emperors are buried (all but two, I believe). There's a walkway up to the valley where the tombs are and it's beautiful. Before the actual walk, there's a structure that houses a statue of a tortoise. It's supposedly good luck to touch the tortoise's bottom. The stone is actually a little shinier on its butt, too, due to superstitious people touching the tortoise butt.
It's lined with these huge statues that are remarkably well-preserved. They were several hundred years old and showed less wear than the foundation of our 80-year old house. Charlie, our tour guide, said that the stones they carved the statues from were brought there by an ingenious method. Wells were dug near the site and the water was poured on the ground so that it would freeze, providing a slick surface on which to slide the massive (and otherwise unmoveable) stones.
The figures were of larger-than-life animals and humans. For each type of figure, there was a seated pair and a standing pair. The reason for this is to show that there would always be a guard of that type... when the standing one got tired, the sitting pair could take over.
One funny thing about the walk is that they have music playing out of these speakers designed as rocks. They did it to preserve the natural feel of the place, but once you noticed it was hard not to laugh at it. We also noticed many "trees" that held lights and other electrical things at several other sites throughout China.
After the walk, we went to see a tomb of the first Ming emperor buried in that valley. You can climb up to the top of this monument that is actually just ahead of the tomb. You don't actually walk on the tomb mound. From the top of the monument, you can see that emperor's son and grandson's tombs off in the distance. The coolest thing about the Ming tomb, though, is the building that currently houses some of the treasures from opened tombs. There are these immense columns made from some now-extinct tree that resists rot and insects.
China is holding off on opening more tombs and excavating lots of sites until technology is developed to protect the items that are unearthed. Several times, they opened tombs with amazing treasures inside only to find that within hours the treasures seriously deteriorated.
