[Photo provided to China Daily]

Lost treasures

Three months after that the archaeologists opened the wooden coffins of the emperor and his two empresses, coffins that had lain in the innermost room of this five-room burial chamber. Some parts of the coffins had rotted away, or even collapsed. And the corpses had long been reduced to bones. But what was found inside the coffins, including brocaded fabrics and accessories made of silver, gold and jade, stunned the archaeological world in China and beyond.

However, due to a lack of adequate conservation methods, many precious objects, fabrics in particular, were exposed to the air and suffered irreversible damages.

"The luster retained for centuries thanks to the lack of oxygen inside the tomb was lost forever," says Yang, who married Zhao in the winter of 1957, a few months after the excavation was completed.