Pengshan · A hidden Han world
In the green cliffs on the east bank of the Min River hide 4,580 rock-cut Han-dynasty tombs — the Jiangkou cliff tombs, a national key cultural relic. The Pengshan Han Cliff Tomb Museum built over them is free: push open a tomb door, crawl into a two-thousand-year-old "underground residence," stand before a national top-grade bronze money tree and the pictorial brick Guo Moruo named "the world's first kiss," then step into a Ming hall built without a single iron nail. Quiet, free and dense with content — the most underrated heritage stop around Chengdu.
The complex centers on Meihua village in Jiangkou and spreads across Saizi Mountain, Changshangeng and other ridges — 30.4 square kilometers holding 4,580 surviving tombs. Dating runs from the late Western Han to no later than the Three Kingdoms, mostly Eastern Han — meaning these chambers were cut when Pengshan was still called Wuyang, seat of the Shu-Han Jianwei commandery (see our Three Kingdoms trail). In 2001 the tombs entered the fifth batch of national key cultural relics.
Cliff burial was the Han way of "cutting a house into the mountain": passage, gate and chambers imitating the home of the living — front hall and rear chamber, side rooms, a hall, a kitchen, wall niches — "treating the dead as the living." Passages run about 20 meters with socketed drainage pipes still legible after two thousand years; the gates mimic residence doors with four-tier lintels carved with eaves, bracket sets, auspicious plants, animals and dancing musicians.
① The tomb display area: the signature experience. Tombs No. 2, 3 and 4 of Tomb Group 951 are open — you can crawl right in, walk the 20-meter passage, touch the chisel marks and look up at carved caisson ceilings. Six structural types (boat-shaped chambers, shaft-and-side-room tombs and more) appear in single-, double- and triple-chamber layouts; pottery and stone coffins side by side show the rank of their occupants.
② Zitong Hall (historical artifacts): a Ming-dynasty building serving as the gallery (see below).
③ The sculpture hall: Han pictorial bricks and stones, home of the "world's first kiss" and the Queen Mother of the West brick.
Allow 1–1.5 hours. Address: No. 1 Shuangjiang Village, Jiangkou subdistrict. Free. Open Tue–Sun 9:00–17:00 (last entry 16:30), closed Mondays (check official notices).
Excavated in 1972, the bronze money tree on its pottery base stands 1.44 meters — the largest, most finely cast and most richly decorated money tree found in any Han cliff tomb, designated a national top-grade cultural relic. Modeled on pine and cypress, its five tiers of branches are hung with Han wuzhu coins and over a hundred figures and animals: a vermilion bird crowning the top, Fuxi with a human head and serpent body holding the full moon; on the branches, the Queen Mother of the West, the Cowherd and Weaver Girl, lute players, singers and acrobats — Han wealth dreams, immortal beliefs and daily joy cast into one tree. It drew crowds on its 1986 Japan tour.
The sculpture hall's most famous piece is the erotic pictorial brick: a nude couple locked in a kiss, anatomically true and emotionally direct — Guo Moruo called it "the world's first kiss." Far from scandal, it is a vivid artifact of Han life-worship and education.
Also unmissable: the Queen Mother of the West brick — enthroned on a dragon-tiger seat with deer attendants, the jade rabbit pounding medicine and the blue bird, an icon of Han longing for immortality; the high-relief stone dog — a Central Asian mastiff, evidence of Han-era exchange; and the "harmonious couple" relief — husband cooking at the stove while his wife, baby on her back, steadies him, jokingly called Sichuan's earliest "henpecked husband." The Southern Song scholar Hong Shi recorded a dated tomb inscription (1157) at Jiangkou, making it one of China's earliest textually recorded dated tombs; six pieces in the book "One Hundred National Treasures of China" come from these tombs.
The second gallery is itself an artifact: Zitong Hall, rebuilt in 1404 (Yongle era), moved piece by piece from Zitong village and reassembled in the museum in 1985. Single-eaved hip-and-gable roof, three bays by three, and not one iron nail; its "shang'ang" bracket set exists in only two wooden structures in China (the other is Suzhou's Xuanmiao Temple). Inside: Han-to-Qing artifacts, headlined by two tons of historic coins spanning Wang Mang, the Three Kingdoms and the Jin dynasties. A Ming hall holding Han treasures — a conversation across a thousand years.
The tombs hold a special place in Chinese archaeology. From June 1941 to December 1942, the Sichuan–Kang Antiquities Survey Team — combining the wartime-exiled Institute of History and Philology (Academia Sinica), the preparatory office of the National Central Museum and the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture, led by Wu Jinding with members including Xia Nai, Zeng Zhaoyu, Gao Quxun and Feng Hanji — systematically excavated here, clearing 76 cliff tombs and recovering hundreds of artifacts. In late 1942 the finds were loaded onto three large boats at Jiangkou and shipped to Lizhuang, eventually reaching the Nanjing Museum; the resulting volume "Han Cliff Tombs at Pengshan, Sichuan" shook the archaeological world. The museum's panels still show their field notes and group photos.
About an hour from Chengdu (exit at the Pengshan expressway toll gate, then ~20 minutes). Tombs first, then the money tree and bricks, Zitong Hall last — 1 to 1.5 hours.
The old wharf town where the Fu and Nan rivers meet — the water gateway of the "Wuyang tea market" era.
Nearby, CNY 60 — Zhang Xianzhong's sunken gold and silver. Han tombs in the morning, Ming treasure after lunch: two thousand years in one day.
About 13 km back toward Chengdu: the 20-year-old shop on Guanbao Road for liangban pork and sweet-skin duck — dinner on the spot or vacuum-packed to go.
Q: Same place as the Shipwreck Museum? A: No — Han tombs (~2,000 years, free) vs. late-Ming sunken treasure (~380 years, CNY 60). They're close; do both in a day.
Q: Good for kids? A: Yes. Crawling into tombs feels like an adventure, and the animals and stories on the bricks are easy to tell. The passages are dim — keep little ones close.
Q: Best way to get there? A: Drive via the Chengdu–Leshan expressway, exit at Pengshan (~20 minutes more); or take the train to Pengshan North and a ~25-minute taxi. Navigate to "Pengshan Han Cliff Tomb Museum."
The cliff tombs are at Jiangkou; about 13 km north, Gongyi Guoshi Luwei (188 Guanbao Road, Gongyi Town) has been serving for 20 years — after two millennia of Han tombs, a bite of today's Pengshan.
More guides: Wuyang: the world's first tea market · Three Kingdoms trail · Jiangkou Shipwreck Museum · Pengshan history in one page