What's slang for grave robbery?

There are many slang terms for robbing a tomb, such as "supporting a pot", "inverted bucket", "turning over jiaozi with meat", "digging mushrooms", "turning over the chamber", "planing antiques" and "planing jiaozi".

Grave robbing is a shady business, which is called "digging ancestral graves" by ordinary people. Not only illegal, but also contrary to human relations. Therefore, grave robbers have their own set of contact code words when stealing, which is what people call slang. Slang, also known as argot and secret language, is commonly known as "incision". The emergence of language is the need of communication and expression, and its primary function is to make others understand. But slang, on the contrary, is often confused by outsiders.

Support the pot, inverted bucket and turn over the meat dumplings

In the underground grave robbery industry, perhaps everyone thinks that the most commonly used word is "grave robbery", but in fact it is never said in the circle.

In the past, among the grave robbers in Shaanxi and Shanxi, "supporting the pot" was the favorite to represent grave robbery. The original intention of supporting the pot is to build a stove. In the early years, people went out to make a living, and cooking was to temporarily set up a triangular table, put a pot on it, and then make a fire to cook, so it was called "supporting the pot". Later, "supporting the pot" evolved into the beginning of a family life, and grave robbers used it as a robbery, which was very vivid. Correspondingly, if "the pot can't hold", it is robbery and returning empty-handed, which is also called "walking empty".

In Henan, northern Jiangsu and other places, grave robbers like to call grave robbery "digging (planing) sweet potatoes"; Southern grave robbers described grave robbery as a "meat-turning group". Similar to this context is "turning salted fish", which was commonly used by grave robbers in the north in the past. Why is it called "meat-turning jiaozi" and "salted fish"? This has something to do with the anonymity of the bodies in the grave robbery circle.

"inverted bucket" is a slang term for grave robbery that many readers know at present. Many tomb-robbing protagonists are everywhere in tomb-robbing novels. It is actually wrong to say this sentence often. In the past, only grave robbers around Beijing and northeast China such as Shenyang would say this. The so-called "fight" is the coffin. Inverted bucket is to take out the things in the coffin, which is naturally a grave robbery.

"Digging mushrooms" and "turning over the chamber"

During the period of the Republic of China, grave robbers who came from soldiers and bandits in Beijing often called grave robbery "blowing up graves". The emergence of this word is directly related to the innovation of grave robbery means.

Traditionally, grave robbery is excavated with earth-fetching tools such as Luoyang shovel. After explosives were widely used in modern military activities, grave robbers began to pay attention to it and use it. Blow up a pit, and the coffin and funerary objects will be exposed instantly, with high efficiency. The earliest use of this blasting method in grave robbery should be the warlord grave robbers in the Republic of China, among which Sun Dianying was the most influential.

Sun Dianying's grave robbery is a "grave explosion". At that time, he was worried that the blasting would make a loud noise and lied about testing new mines in advance. Modern grave robbers are much smarter than Sun Dianying, and their technology is more advanced: directional blasting, remote control blasting, expansion blasting and other advanced military combat means are all applied to grave robbery activities.

In ancient times, there were a large number of slang words in the grave robbery circles around Beijing, and "blowing the grave" was only one of the representative languages in the grave robbery circles in Beijing during the Republic of China, such as "digging mushrooms", "rummaging the chamber", "sweeping the storehouse" and "filtering the pit". "Turning over the chamber" means digging in the grave. If it is "turning over the chamber", it is to dig directly from the top of the tomb to the bottom by using the common "uncovering the top" method in modern archaeology. "Filter pit" refers to slang used by ordinary grave robbers when they steal a stolen grave.

"Planing antiques" and "Planing jiaozi"

Ancient and modern grave robbers didn't realize that their behavior was a crime. In their view, grave robbery, like going out to work, is a normal means of making a living and making a fortune. In Luoyang, Henan Province, the slang for grave robbery is called "planing antiques", which reveals this mentality.

"planing antiques" appeared in the late Qing dynasty and became more popular in the Republic of China. During my local research in recent years, I found that it is still used in the circle. This slang comes from this: during the Republic of China, people called the cultural relics left by predecessors antiques, or antiques, antiques, dominoes and so on. In the 25th year of Guangxu (1899), the Qing government built the Luobian Railway (now a part of Longhai Railway) connecting Luoyang and Kaifeng to cross Mangshan Mountain, and a large number of ancient tombs were destroyed, and funerary objects were thrown around. At first, no one wanted these antiques. People thought they were unlucky. Later, antique dealers came to buy it. When they were able to sell money, the local people suddenly woke up and took tools to Mangshan to plane antiques and sell them. When the ground couldn't be dug, it began to dig graves. Gradually, "digging antiques" became synonymous with local grave robbery. There is also a saying that "planing antiques" originated from the "planing" behavior of local people.

It should be noted that the slang for the red gang to rob a tomb is called "open a dead ticket". The underworld calls hostage-taking "kidnapping" for the living. The author speculates that the statement of "opening a dead ticket" may come from this, and "dead ticket" should refer to a dead body.

Tomb raiding is unpopular, so people describe it as "robbing a dark room", which later became Jianghu slang.