This is a true discovery, retold as a tale. The young soldier and his daughter are imagined, but the tomb, the prince and his jade suit are real, and were found by soldiers digging in a hillside in 1968.
The Hole in the Hill
Zhang was nineteen, and the hill was nothing special. It was a rocky slope in Hebei province, covered in scrub, and his unit had been ordered to dig into it. Day after day they hacked at the stone, sweating and grumbling.
Then, one afternoon in the spring of 1968, Zhang's shovel hit nothing at all.
It went straight through into empty air. A puff of cold, ancient-smelling dust rose up around his boots. The men stopped and stared at the dark gap in the rock.
"A cave?" someone said.
Zhang knelt down, held his flashlight to the hole, and peered in. He saw rooms carved into the mountain. He saw the gleam of bronze. And he felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck, because he understood that he was looking into a place no living person had seen for more than two thousand years.
The Prince Who Wanted to Live Forever
The archaeologists came quickly. Over the following weeks, they explained to the soldiers what they had found: the tomb of Liu Sheng, a prince of the Han dynasty, who had died in the year 113 BC.
"He was the brother of an emperor," one of the scholars told Zhang. "Rich, powerful and, by all accounts, fond of wine and good living. And like many nobles of his time, he believed one thing above all."
"What?" Zhang asked.
"That jade could keep his body from ever decaying. That if he were wrapped in it, completely, from head to toe, he would never turn to dust."
The Suit
Zhang was there the day they lifted it into the light.
It lay on the floor of the burial chamber like a sleeping knight in armor: the shape of a man, made entirely of small green-gray squares of jade, thousands of them, each one drilled at the corners and stitched to the next with fine gold wire. It had a jade head, jade hands with jade fingers, even jade shoes.
Later they counted the pieces. There were nearly 2,500. Someone calculated that skilled craftsmen must have worked on it for years.
"It's beautiful," Zhang whispered.
The old scholar nodded. Then he did something Zhang never forgot. He gently opened the suit, and showed him what was inside.
There was nothing. Only a little dust.
His Wife Beside Him
Nearby, in a second tomb cut into the same hill, they found Liu Sheng's wife, the princess Dou Wan. She too had been laid to rest in a suit of jade sewn with gold, more than two thousand pieces of it.
Zhang stood between the two tombs on his last day at the hill. The prince and his wife had spent a fortune to stay together forever, sealed in the mountain, wrapped in stone they believed would defeat time.
Time had won, of course. But somehow, standing there, it did not feel like a sad ending. Their suits had survived. Their names had survived. Two thousand years later, a nineteen-year-old soldier was standing in their home, thinking about them.
Many Years Later
When Zhang was an old man, his daughter took him to the museum where the jade suits are kept. They stood in front of the glass for a long time.
"Do you think he was foolish?" she asked. "To believe jade could make him live forever?"
Zhang thought about it.
"No," he said at last. "I think he was right, in a way. The jade did not keep his body. But it kept his story. And here we are, still telling it."
The Legend and the Truth
In 1968, soldiers working in the hills of Mancheng, in China's Hebei province, broke into the tombs of Liu Sheng, Prince Jing of Zhongshan, who died in 113 BC, and his wife Dou Wan. Each lay in a complete burial suit of jade plaques joined with gold wire. Liu Sheng's suit has about 2,500 pieces, and Dou Wan's about 2,100.
Han dynasty nobles believed jade could protect and preserve the body after death. Their bodies had long since turned to dust, but the two jade suits are among the most famous treasures of ancient China, and are displayed in a museum in Hebei today.
For thousands of years, people have believed jade could protect what they loved most. Perhaps that is why a jade piece still feels like something to keep forever.
💡 Read more legends and true stories of jade in The Legends of Jade: More Precious Than Gold.
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