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China
insists Genghis Khan's grave is in Chinese territory |
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Agence France Presse -- English
November 2, 2004 Tuesday 2:34 PM GMT
BEIJING
Chinese
media insisted Tuesday that Genghis Khan's grave is in
northeast China, refuting a Japanese archaeologist's claim
last month that the grave might be near the ruins of his
palace in Mongolia.
Quoting Qi Zhongyi, a 34th generation descendant of Khan,
Xinhua news agency said the Mongolian conqueror's mausoleum
was located in Ejin Horo Banner on the Ordos highlands in
China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
"Skeletons were seen when his coffin was opened during a grand
momorial ceremony in 1954," said 78-year-old Qi.
The burial site of Genghis Khan, who died in 1227, is
disputed.
Last month a joint Japanese and Mongolian research team said
it believed a mausoleum found near the ruins of Khan's palace
complex, 250 kilometers (155 miles) southeast of the Mongolian
capital Ulan Bator, was his.
In 2001 a US-Mongolian expedition also announced it had
discovered the burial place, northeast of Ulan Bator on a
hillside near where he is believed to have been born in 1162.
Khan is revered in China and depicted by the communist party
as the precursor of a great "Chinese" dynasty -- a warrior who
united the unruly Mongolian tribes and conquered a large slice
of Asia in the 13th century.
Most historians agree he died while fighting in the region of
Xixia on the edge of the autonomous Chinese regions of Ningxia
and Inner Mongolia.
But Mongolian historians, as well as most foreign experts,
reject the Chinese view of events.
They see Khan as a Mongol hero who conquered territory from
China to the Caspian Sea before his grandson Kublai Khan
installed himself in Beijing and founded the Yuan dynasty
which lasted from 1276 to 1368.
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Changing
Inner Mongolia: Pastoral Mongolian Society and the Chinese State (Oxford
Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology)
