Tomb of Huang Wanli

　　The Tomb of Huang Wanli is situated in Yuyuan Garden, Huchuan Township. The inner diameter of the tomb enclosure is 4 meters, and a stone stele over 1 meter high stands in the middle, engraved with the six characters “Tomb of Huang Wanli from Jiangnan.” On either side of the inscription are a pair of couplets that read: “A heroine who avenged her grievances with bitter resolve; A memorial that shines with the light of the nation.” The site is enclosed by a stone wall, and stone pillars stand on both sides of the tomb entrance. Thirty meters away from the tomb is a 3.3-meter-high, 1.67-meter-wide memorial stele, which records Huang’s life story and the poem she wrote before taking her own life.

　　According to the inscriptions on the steles, Huang Wanli, whose given name was Shuhua, was originally from Jiangning County, Jiangsu Province. As a child, she studied with her father and developed a keen sense of right and wrong. In 1864, when Zeng Guofan’s brother Zeng Guoquan led troops to capture Nanjing, a group of rogue soldiers broke into the Huang family home and successively killed her two brothers, mother, younger brother, and sister-in-law. Huang Shuhua was the sole survivor, but she was abducted and forced into marriage, which she adamantly refused. When the group reached Guanqiao Village in Huchuan Township, Lianyuan, she sewed her clothes tightly around her body, tied ten poems written on silk around her waist, and managed to poison and kill two of her captors by cunning means before hanging herself. She was only seventeen years old at the time. Later generations, moved by her fearless spirit, specially built a tomb and erected steles in her memory.