Qualla: Wu Family Shrines

Wu Family Shrines: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Carved into stone nearly two thousand years ago, the archer Hou Yi takes aim at the sun crows. Beside him, the goddess Xihe prepares to hitch her dragon horse to the sun chariot, while the mythical Fusang tree rises between heaven and earth. These are not illustrations in a book. They are relief carvings on the walls of the Wu Family Shrines in Jiaxiang County, southwestern Shandong, built in 151 AD during the Eastern Han dynasty. The carvings survive because three walls of Wu Liang's shrine were still standing as late as the 11th century, and because the stories they tell were too compelling for successive generations to forget.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Wu Family Shrines: The Shrine of Wu Liang

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zhangzhugang, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Wu Family Shrines were built as funerary monuments for the Wu clan, a prominent family of the Eastern Han dynasty. Wu Liang, the best-known member, lived from 78 to 151 AD, and his shrine was constructed in the year of his death. The site in Jiaxiang County contains multiple ...

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Image: Zhangzhugang | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wu Family Shrines: Stone Pictures as Architecture

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ChenDaoIsHere, CC0. For centuries, scholars treated the Wu family reliefs as individual pictures, extracting and studying them as isolated works of pictorial art. That changed in the 1930s, when Wilma Fairbank visited the site and advanced a fundamentally different approach. Fairbank argued that the...

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Image: ChenDaoIsHere | CC0

Wu Family Shrines: Myths in Stone

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit An ancient artist who made the mural painting during the Han dynasty., Public domain. The carvings depict a world where mythology and history coexist without clear boundaries. Hou Yi, the legendary archer, aims at the crows that carried the suns across the sky, recalling the myth in which he shot down nine of ten suns to save the earth from burning. Xihe, the godd...

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Image: An ancient artist who made the mural painting during the Han dynasty. | Public domain

Wu Family Shrines: Endurance Against the Odds

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 沙畹, Public domain. That the Wu Family Shrines survive at all is remarkable. Two millennia of warfare, weather, and neglect have destroyed most Han dynasty funerary architecture. The shrines endured partly because of Wu Liang's prominence, partly because of the quality of the stone and carving, and ...

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Image: 沙畹 | Public domain