There is a tomb in ROM’s China gallery. The museum claims that the owner of the tomb is Zu Dashou, a general in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, but academic circles have always been skeptical.
Zu Dashou was originally a military general in the Ming Dynasty. When Jinzhou was under attack, he held the city for three months. When the food in the city ran out, he began to kill the horses for food, then the citizens, then the old and weak soldiers. After all that, he had no choice but to surrender to the Qing soldiers. But this time it was a fake surrender. A few years later, he was trapped in Jinzhou again. He was again running out of ammunition and food, so he had to surrender to the Qing troops again. Because of his capriciousness, he was assigned a suburban home. That is Yongtai Village, Qinghe, on the outskirts of Beijing, where the tomb was purchased.
Besides the tomb dome, this impressive tomb contains an altar table, carved panels of tomb gate, and the entrance gate to the graveyard. The museum also has a short section of the Shinto Road. Beside the road are a pair of stone camels and a stone Wengzhong for a civil official and a military general. The civil official dressed as civil servants of the Ming Dynasty. Although Zu Dashou surrendered to the Qing Dynasty, the Qing government still respected him as a famous general of the Ming Dynasty. The prototype of the military general was a strong man during the Qin period. According to legend, the enemies were very afraid of him, so people used his stone statue to guard the tomb. The total weight of the tomb is about 150 tons. After these artifacts were acquired, they were transported from Beijing to Tianjin Port by oxcart, and then crossed the ocean by ship. Finally, the entire tomb was transported to Canada.
There are photos taken at the tomb site on the walls. In one of the photos, you can see that there is a stone pillar in the distance. Why is this pillar not together with other things? The display board said there should also be another pair of stone wengzhong, stone sheep and stone lion. And the most important tombstone is not there either. It is said that the tomb was stolen before and the whereabouts of the monument are unknown. That's why some people question who this tomb belongs to. Because in 2013, fragments of Zu Dashou’s commemorative monument were discovered in Xingcheng, Liaoning, but the cemetery had been razed to the ground. It said that he was actually buried in Ningyuan, Liaoning, not in Qinghe where the tomb was bought!
Two archaeologists from Beijing conducted a very detailed investigation and expounded extensively on the life of Zu Dashou and his family, the tomb system of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and also conducted on-site investigations in relevant places. In the end, both places were considered to be his tomb. Apparently, Zu Dashou was first buried in Beijing, and later moved to Xingcheng in the 13th year of Shunzhi. No one should have any doubts now.