An Armor for Immortality by Mike Vang

To the Chinese, jade is a very valuable gem that was used for many arts and craft, as well as jewelry and various other personal and funerary items. There were two types of jade, of which the rarer one was considered to be more valuable. Nephrite was a soft mineral that were more in abundance throughout China. Hence, commoners were able to create art and funerary objects at relatively cheap prices. The counter part to Nephrite was Jadeite, a hard mineral that was elementally composed of sodium aluminum silicate. Unlike Nephrite, Jadeite was less common and deemed more valuable. Jadeite was, therefore, expensive and only the very wealthy, such as the imperial family, were able to afford anything made from of it. Because true jade has much monetary value, it became a symbol of wealth and power. In turn, a symbol of power and immortality grew out of the greenish-white gem that complimented perfectly with the Chinese belief of the souls’ eternal life-after-death.

Jade, in turn, was redefined in the western Han dynasty during the time period of 202 BCE to 200 CE, a reign of roughly over 100 years. Keeping with the traditional practices of creating funerary objects and post-life luxuries for the deceased to bring into the next life, the imperial family of the Han dynasty established a precedent in Chinese history through their innovation of the jade burial suit. Comprised of 2,498 pieces of jade and more than two and a half pounds of thread made from gold, the Han dynasty jade burial suit, measured at roughly 1.88 meters, surpassed all minqi that were created before and after its time of reign. Although their coffins had collapsed, Liu Sheng and Dou Wan were each found in a well-preserved jade suit... Each suit consists of 12 sections: face, head, front, and back parts of tunic, arms, gloves, leggings, and feet. It has been estimated that a suit such as Liu Sheng's would have taken ten years to fashion. Along with the jade suits, Liu Sheng and Dou Wan each had a gilt bronze headrest inlaid with jade and held jade crescents in their hand (http://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/archae/2liujade.htm).

Collectively, only two known burial suits from the Han dynasty exist in complete, undisturbed forms today. Both were found in the tomb of Prince Liu Sheng; one was for himself and the other for his wife, Lady Dou Wan. Through such an extravagant and, nonetheless, bold movement, Prince Liu Sheng and the Han imperial family punctually stated their power and wealth. However, the focal objective of creating something like the jade burial suit is no more than continuing and maintaining respect for the traditional belief of life beyond the grave. Preceding the Han rule and continuing for many dynasties afterwards, the idea of immortality provided the incentive for many Chinese imperials to innovate complicated and full-fledged tombs to ensue their afterlife. In turn, commoners were often hired to create figures and ornaments to accompany their imperial rulers, as they journeyed into the next realm. Moreover, the minqis and human sacrifices were established to satisfy, more specifically, yet another aspect of Chinese belief; to serve one of the two souls a person had. The Hun and the Po were the two souls that coexisted in a person, during their life. Once the person dies, Chinese beliefs state that the Hun will leave the body through the head of the departed and venture into the next life, while the Po remains within the confinements of the body and tomb.

In the Han dynasty, the jade burial suits were created to accommodate this aspect of the Chinese ideology. A distinct opening was created at the head section to allow an easy exit pathway for the Hun to leave the body. Likewise, it was created with the luxury of expensive jade to keep the Po happy living inside the body. The morticians responsible for preparing the bodies of Prince Liu Sheng and Lady Dou Wan also went as far as using pre-measured jade pieces to plug all openings of the body so that the Hun would be less likely to inadvertently exit through these openings and become stuck or incapacitated from making a successful escape to the next life, and so that the Po would be less likely to be tempted to escape. Because the idea of immortality ran deep within the culture at the time, the idea of embalming and preserving the body also emerged. Hence, the Han’s method of executing this idea was to use jade as a preservative, much like how we use air-tight coffins to encase our deceased. In the end, as modern discoveries assert, the jade and golden threads had no effect on preserving the bodies of Prince Liu Sheng and his wife. All that were left were their skeletal remains.

Compared to an earlier method of body preservation and methods of guiding the Hun, the jade suit was a complete failure. The tomb, preservation, and minqi’s of Lady Dai, also from the Han dynasty, were more effective in executing the idea of immortality and providing guidance to the Hun. Her morticians used lacquer to line her insides after embalming, built a more complex tomb that consisted of three layers of coffins, and provided a Feiyi (burial banner) that laid atop her immediate coffin to serve as a modern-day equivalence of a map for her Hun. Thus, her body resisted to decomposition, was better protected from the elements, and, theoretically, her Hun would have been more informed on its travels into the next life.
Regardless of the success of preserving the dead, or the effectiveness of guiding the Hun to the next life, the focal objective of the Han dynasty was, once again, to maintain the ideology of immortality. Their development of the jade burial suits depicted their respect for traditional values, but it emphasized even more on the power and wealth they held as an imperial family. Jade still maintains as a symbol of immortality and is still widely collected today. Nevertheless, no other group of people continued to practiced the unprecedented act of using such an expensive item as jade to tribute to their deceased, after the fall of the Han dynasty. It survives in the history texts as a niche for the Han dynasty within the timeline of the Chinese civilization.