Ming Dynasty Coffins Discovered With Preserved Female Body

2011 February 24th night, three Ming Dynasty coffins were discovered at the construction site along Chunlan Road in urban Taizhou city in Jiangsu province. The coffins were made of fine wood, coated with lacquer, and the graves located over 2 meters deep from the surface. March 1st, Taizhou museum personnel opened one of the coffins.

Preserved body of Ming Dynasty female discovered in Jiangsu Taizhou, eyelashes, etc. clearly discernible

2011 March 1st, the preserved body of a Ming Dynasty female was discovered in Taizhou city of Jiangsu province. This female body was wrapped in a shroud, blanket, and clothes nearly completely submerged in a yellow-brownish coffin liquid. The body was rigid, her skin intact, her facial features, hair, eyelashes, etc. all clearly discernible, with her body measuring around 1.5 meters long.

While cleaning and examining, Taizhou museum personnel only found a wooden pillow, Ming Dynasty costumes, pottery, bones, but no relics with writing on them.

This opened coffin's lacquer coating was exceptionally well preserved.

Upon opening, the female body was wrapped in a shroud, blanket, and clothes nearly completely submerged in a yellow-brownish coffin liquid. The body was rigid, her skin intact, her facial features, hair, eyelashes, etc. all clearly discernible, with her body measuring around 1.5 meters long.

Workers carefully lift the female body out of the coffin.

Outside of the coffin, the female body was exceptionally rigid.

Even the sewing on the female body's shoes were faintly visible.

Comments from NetEase:

网易江苏省连云港市网友:

She’s been dead for hundreds of years, and was lying there just fine, but you guys insist on digging the dead person out! May you all die without sons! What more, you put them out in the open air, which means their bodies will quickly go bad! Do you guys know what you are doing? Where are her descendants?!

网易浙江省杭州市网友:

A group of idiots. A perfectly fine cultural relic ruined like this, and they even show it off? An embarrassment!!!

网易山东省网友:

This is truly a bunch of robbers!!!

网易山西省太原市网友:

Go ahead and dig [excavate], just wait until your descendants go and dig up the graves of you “archeologists” many years from now and put your remains in a museum for the people of the future to look at.

网易山东省济南市网友:

A mistake, a mistake, people these days. We shouldn’t disturb the dead. May Buddha preserve us…may Buddha preserve us…

网易河北省廊坊市网友:

In the future, whether we have money or not, it will be better to be buried as ordinarily/commonly [inconspicuously] as possible, and not like this.

网易广东省广州市网友:

Are you serious!!!
Opening these ancient coffins in this kind of environment?
Not the least bit professional, truly wasted/ruined!
These bastards are so disrespectful to ancestors!!

网易河北省石家庄市网友:

Actually this is simply digging up other people’s ancestral graves, this is the what is most wrong about it! [They] will definitely suffer retribution/consequences, just wait!!!

网易意大利网友:

This is archeological excavation? It is clearly ruining [of archeological artifacts]! This kind of “cultural relic preservation” is worst than simply letting them continue lying in the ground. The kind of so-called archeologists in China are simply a bunch of idiots. So Sad.

网易广东省东莞市网友:

Starting from why cremation is promoted these days,
why?
Because people these days (whether public or private individuals),
they all like to dig up graves!
Think,
several hundreds of years later,
your descendants,
[and] violates your remains.
As you right now,
how do you feel?
China’s tradition is to respect one’s ancestors,
but what about now?
On one side calling for the recovery/revival of traditions,
[but] on the other side digging up our ancestors’ graves!
So,
it’s better to be cremated!