Xuzhou Museum: life, brutal death and a luxurious afterlife

A terracotta figurine dancer is shown at the Xuzhou Museum.[Photo/IC]

Rulers were also buried with jade dragons and engraved discs used in worship. The shape is meant to emulate heaven. (Earth is square according to Chinese geomancy.)

The most striking displays are of the funerary suits tailored with thousands of jade tiles sewn with metal thread.

While an unidentified king's suit was stripped of its 1.58 kg of gold by grave robbers, the tomb raiders dared not take even one of the 4,248 tiles, since the precious stone's ownership was the sole realm of nobility.

Possession by anyone else was a capital offense. So there was no black market.

Other jade suits sewn with silver and copper belonged to a general and prince. They encased every inch of the cadaver aside from a hole at the top of the head — a portal for the soul to whoosh in and out as it pleased.

Jade, crystal and glass cicadas were placed in the mouths of the dead elite to facilitate rebirth, since cicadas erupt from the earth after dormancy. The Han plugged pretty much every hole in the face.

The pottery floor proves emperors didn't buy into the idea: "You can't take it all with you."

Han emperors abandoned the practice of sacrificing their servants to be interred with them. They were instead entombed with individualized clay likenesses of their courts. There are clay concubines for afterworld romps.

Prince Chu's tomb hosted a musical ensemble with musicians and maidens.

Rows of officials tend to the boring aspects of administration in the afterlife. And there are soldiers, generals and horses in case war breaks out in the spirit world.

Visitors can see where the Tushan king's family spent that afterlife, by visiting their first-century AD tombs.

While the Western Han built mausoleums inside mountains, the Eastern Han built mountains around mausoleums. Pottery, bronze coins and 4,000 clay seals were discovered in the rammed earth piled 17 meters over the graves.

Visitors can see the queen's jade bodysuit in her burial chamber. It seems she indeed enjoyed the finer things in life — even after it was over.