The Wu Family Shrines (), of which the Wu Liang Shrine (武梁祠) is the best known, was the family shrine of the Wu clan of the

Eastern Han dynasty The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...

. The shrines contain a vast amount of relief carvings. Three walls of Wu Liang's shrine were still standing as late as the 11th century, which is the reason that the site of all the family shrines are often called after him. The shrine to Wu Liang (78-151 AD) was built in 151 AD in what is now

Jiaxiang County Jiaxiang County () is a county in the southwest of Shandong Shandong is a coastal Provinces of China, province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower rea ...

of southwestern

Shandong Shandong is a coastal Provinces of China, province in East China. Shandong has played a major role in Chinese history since the beginning of Chinese civilization along the lower reaches of the Yellow River. It has served as a pivotal cultural ...

province. In the 1930s,

Wilma Fairbank Wilma Denio Cannon Fairbank (April 23, 1909 – April 4, 2002) () was an American artist, scholar of Chinese art and architecture, and diplomat. Her scholarship on the Han dynasty Wu Liang tombs, which she started in early 1930s, was pioneering ...

visited the site and advanced the study of the tombs by treating the relief carvings as architectural wholes rather than pictorial art.

References

External links

* Barbieri, Anthony (2019)

University of California, Santa Barbara. {{China-hist-stub Ancestral shrines in China Major National Historical and Cultural Sites in Shandong Han dynasty architecture Cemeteries in China

References

Further reading

External links