However, the Lei family lost favour with the fall of the Qing Dynasty early last century. Without financial income, the family disintegrated and became oblivious to the outside world.

The offspring sold the design drafts and wax models for foot and none of them have been involved in architecture since that time.

  The Design Drafts of Yangshi Lei

Apart from the grand architectures, the Lei family has also left another treasure - design drafts, which are seen as precious historical archives of Yangshi Lei. In the National Library of China alone, there are up to 20 thousand architectural design drafts, each of which plays an important role in the research of the history of the Qing Dynasty and how architecture developed at the time. There are a variety of plans, such as projective drawings, front elevations, and side elevations. There are also a few revolving drawings, especially of the top of the mausoleum, which has an anomalistic dimensional form and structure and a contour map, which was very popular at the time.

The whole process of the project is reflected from these design drafts, including: choosing materials, digging, construction foundation, constructing the underground palace and surrounding grounds, installing pillars and making tiles, all of which reflect the original features of the Yangshi Lei, as well as the architectural procedure and the technology available.

Wax models -part of the design drafts- are model drawings made by paper , straw and wood. The wax model which was named after the last procedure, which used the special small brand iron to fortify the model, provides important help for historians to discover the science, technology, culture and art of that period.

Apart from the process, we can also learn some of Yangshi Lei's important architectural concepts from the blueprints. For example, Chinese architectures have always been low. The height of Taihe Dian, imperial palace of the Palace Museum (the Hall of Supreme Harmony) is under 35 meters, and the width is 75 meters, this being the proper distance between emperor and ministers in order to keep pleasant relations between them, while maintaining the optimal distance for watching and hearing in the theater.

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