Ma Huang Dui

Sorry for the lack of updates, I was traveling with Hannah for the last month, but alas, I am back...

On our travels we went to the Hunan Provincial museum in Changsha, one of the better museums we saw in all of China. It holds most of the relics and artifacts from the Ma Hunag Dui tombs. The tomb was a series of huge wooden coffins, the walls of each on were a few feet thick. This, along with a sort of acid alcohol they used to preserve the body, allowed the remains of a Hunan elite woman remain relatively intact. Her body is on displayed as well as her preserved organs with each of their wieghts, an explaination that she probably died from heart disease, and what her last meal may have been, something with dates.

More interesteding than the body are the relics about ancient healthcare. I believe Unschuld writes about this, the oldest Chinese medicine documents found, before the Huang di nei jing. You can see displays of exercise diagrams and instructions for physical exercises such as qi kong and herbal prescriptions. Too bad I can't read Chinese very well, would have been exciting to read them. They are all written on small strips of bamboo. There are also documents about the jing luo, explain the knowledge of 11 of the current channels (not sure which ones) and instructions for the use of moxabustion on these channels for health maintenance. Interestingly, there were also herbs that were preserved in tomb, you can see thousand year old ginger, da zao, and various bean herbs. Really fascinating and inspirational to be studying a tradition that is connected to these ancient items, which were luckily preserved.