At the end of 2012, the China National Silk Museum and the Korean National University of Cultural Heritage signed a MOU and began to cooperate on the conservation of costumes unearthed from tomb No.4 (M4) of Ming dynasty in Lijiafen, Wangdian Town that is located in Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province.
Wangdian is an ancient town. It has a long history and rich in culture. Li Jiafen is a mound with a diameter of about forty meters and a height of nearly three meters. The tomb is located in the western part of the mound. The tomb is buried in four rooms which are numbered M1-M4 from south to north. According to the epitaph, the owner of M2 is Li Xiang, and the other three are Li Xiang’s three wives. The M4 tomb is a masonry structure with a wooden coffin in it. And the cover of the coffin is written with ink “大明庶母许儒人棺枢” which means a mother whose surname is Xu of Ming dynasty (about the 16th century). The corpse with clothes worn on it had been decayed seriously due to the accumulation of water in the coffin.
The aim of collaboration with the Korean National University of Cultural Heritage is to do restoration and research on 10 pieces of silk textiles unearthed from M4. These objects were all in the form of fragments when they were unearthed and in bad condition.
It is known that there are robes, jackets, skirts, pants, scarf, etc. through information collection. Also it can be seen that the fabrics are mainly with damask, satin and gauze, and the patterns on the fabric include birds, beasts, flowers and clouds.

The speech is aimed at the characteristics of costume shapes, weaving structure of fabrics and patterns of objects unearthed from M4, and compared with the characteristics of costumes of Joseon era in order to find out the similarities and differences of costume culture between the Ming Dynasty and the Joseon Dynasty, so as to learn the communication of costumes between China and Korean.