HONGKONG'S brick-vaulted tomb, at Lei Cheng Uk in Sham Shui Po, was built about 2,000 years ago, probably for an Imperial military officer. The Han army had only recently re-conquered southern China, ousting a local empire whose grandeur dazzles visitors to Guangzhou's Mausoleum of the Nanyue King.
Like Lei Cheng Uk, the Guangzhou tomb was found accidentally. In 1983, burrowing in a city-centre hill, construction workers unearthed the intact seven-chamber mausoleum of Chao Mei, who ruled southern China in 137-122 BC.
His burial palace was filled with several thousand funereal objects. They included fine jade and bronzeware, precious stones and gold in silk-lined lacquer boxes, cooking vessels, iron tools, a gold-and-silver-inlaid chariot, weapons, and musical instruments.
The chambers also contained the skeletons of 15 human sacrificial victims. To ensure the emperor's happy after-life, courtiers, guards, cooks, a musician, concubines and a harem master were buried with his silk-and-jade-clad corpse. Known as Emperor WenDi, Chao Mei was the second ruler of the Nan (Southern) Yue kingdom, founded in 203 BC by his grandfather, Chao Tuo. Guangzhou, known as Panyu, was their capital.
Their realm - which included Hongkong - was populated by the indigenous Yue tribes. They had been subjugated in 214 BC by northern Chinese forces commanded by Chao Tuo, a general serving Shi Huangdi, the warrior who first unified China. When Shi Huangdi died five years later and his brief Qin Dynasty collapsed, Chao created his own local empire.
He developed a provincial court dominated by the cultural models of the Han Chinese. There was little evidence of local Yue culture in his grandson's mausoleum, apart from some 'ding-tripod' cooking vessels.