Tomb fight spreads to warlord's arch-rival

No sooner has the dust settled on a claim by Henan authorities to have found the tomb of fabled ancient warlord Cao Cao than a new controversy has flared.

This one concerns a claim surrounding the tomb of Liu Bei, who established a rival state.

More than a dozen villagers in Lianhuaba, in Pengshan county, Sichuan, have written to heritage authorities calling for excavation of a royal tomb in the village. They hope the work will verify the site is that of Liu's tomb, the Chengdu Economic Daily reported.

Liu (AD161-223) established the state of Shu Han during the Three Kingdoms Period, which conquered a large swathe of present-day China - including Sichuan, Guizhou and Hunan , as well as part of Hubei and Gansu in rival Cao's Han state.

The classic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms portrays Liu as an idealistic, benevolent and humane ruler who cared for his people and selected good advisers for his government. The petition by the villagers to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the provincial Bureau of Cultural Relics revived a feud among historians from Chengdu and Fengjie county in Chongqing, who have been locked in a protracted battle over Liu's grave.

Rival claims on sites of historic significance, including the tombs of legendary figures, have become a phenomenon in recent years as regional authorities try to cash in on the fame of such sites. With government investment in infrastructure, they can generate high tourist income.

Jiangyou in Sichuan and Anlu in Hubei both claim to be the hometown of Li Bai, a Tang dynasty poet. The Anlu government took out an advertisement on China Central Television in August identifying the city as the poet's home town. This angered the Jiangyou government, which had registered a trademark as being 'the hometown of Li Bai, the city of Chinese poems' in 2003.