ing the Chu Kingdom and excavated from a highly elaborate tomb in 1972 in Changsa, Hunan) was Hmong because the drawings on her caskets and on the piece of silk covering her coffin are designs unique to the Hmong. Based on the seal unearthed, this female corpse was named Xin Zhui, the wife of Li Cang who was the Marquis of Dai. Even after more than two thousand years, her body was well preserved and protected from decay by a set of four coffins carefully arranged inside one another. Along with her body, over 1,400 cultural and funerary objects were buried inside the tomb, ranging from agricultural seeds, combs, mittens, stockings, shoes, gowns, wooden dolls, food and wine containers to zither-like stringed and reed-pipe instruments. On top of the innermost coffin, there laid a splendid and exquisite T-shaped painting on silk. The painting details a person's three souls - one which remains to watch over the body, the second which goes in search of the ancestors and the third which just wanders. This belief in three separate souls and their duties upon death exist today. Having published a paper on this unique piece of painting, Professor Yang believes this old pictorial lends even greater evidence to the claim that the corpse and the Chu Kingdom could be Hmong. He argued that except for a few minor illustrations on the top left, the rest of the intricate illustrations coincided with legends and folk stories of the Hmong. Pointing to the wooden dolls, a tour guide of the museum mentioned that many visiting scholars argue that they are dressed in Hmong-style clothing. Throughout history, if the Hmong people found any kind of peace, it never lasted long. They have been forced to emigrate from northeastern China into the country's southwestern corner. During the Qing Dynasty, several major wars further pushed hundreds of thousands of Hmong into Southeast Asian countries of Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Thailand. The first major war during the Qin...
