Longgang Qianbiao Stele

Longgang Qianbiao Stele

The Longgang Qianbiao Stele is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The Longgang Qianbiao Stele is located in Yongfeng County, Jiangxi Province.

In the center of the Longgang Qianbiao Pavilion stands the Longgang Qianbiao stele. The stone tablet is made of bluish-green limestone from Qingzhou, Shandong, measuring 212 cm in height, 96 cm in width, and 24 cm in thickness, and is entirely dark green in color. The Longgang Qianbiao stele is a memorial monument erected by Ouyang Xiu when he escorted the coffin of his mother Lady Zheng back to her hometown for reburial in Longgang on Fenghuang Mountain during his tenure as Prefect of Qingzhou. It has a history of nearly a thousand years. The inscription Longgang Qianbiao was personally composed and handwritten by Ouyang Xiu, recounting his family background and expressing deep gratitude for the virtues of his parents. It is an outstanding model work that teaches future generations to govern with simplicity, pursue scholarship rigorously, and conduct themselves with benevolence. Alongside Han Yu’s “Eulogy for Twelve Lang” and Yuan Mei’s “Eulogy for My Younger Sister,” it is recognized as one of the three most famous elegiac writings in ancient China, hailed as a timeless masterpiece of literature.

The front of the stele is inscribed with the Longgang Qianbiao text, while the back features the Genealogy of the Ouyang Clan. The four large characters “Longgang Qianbiao” are horizontally engraved on the top of the stele, each character measuring 16 cm square. The main body consists of 27 vertical lines totaling 1,116 characters, each character about 2 cm square. The stele is blackened on both the upper and lower parts, and apart from over 50 characters at the bottom of the Ouyang Clan Genealogy being eroded and illegible, the remaining text is clear and legible. The entire stele is well preserved, with all inscriptions in regular script, incised in intaglio, and written vertically. The characters are dignified, steady, vigorous, and forceful, without excessive ornamentation, fully reflecting Ouyang Xiu’s calligraphic artistry as well as his integrity, uprightness, and filial devotion.

In 2006, the Longgang Qianbiao Stele was included by the State Council in the sixth group of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units.

Further Reading:

· Sixth Batch of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units