Carved stones in the tombs of Wu family lie in the forest of Wu family at the north foot of Wuzhai Mountain in Jiaxiang County, Shandong Province.

Carved stones in the tombs of Wu family are widely known as Wuliang Ancestral Temple. According to the inscription on the stele in the temple, the Wu family in Jiaxiang worked as officials for generations at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220). Their clansmen began to build this temple in front of the tombs in the first year (147) of the Jianhe reign under Emperor Huan of the Eastern Han Dynasty but they didn't complete it until several decades later.

There are various explanations about the structure of the temple. Some say that the temple is made up of four stone rooms: the front room is the Wurong Ancestral Temple, the back one is the Wukaiming Ancestral Temple, the left one is the Wuban Ancestral Temple, while the middle one is the Wuliang Ancestral Temple. Some others say that the temple includes 3 rooms, excluding the last one mentioned above. In the temple, carved stones, including steles, stone lions, gravestones, and portraits, etc. had been discovered in the Song Dynasty (960-1279). These carved stones could be testified inJin Shi Lu(Catalogue of Inscriptions on Stone and Bone) by epigraphist Zhao Mingcheng and inJi Gu Lu(the Texts of Ancient Inscriptions on Bronze) by literati Ouyang Xiu. Later, due to several floods, the stone rooms were inundated.

In the 51^styear of the Qianlong reign of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), epigraphist Huang Yi went to the village to look for the stone rooms. He unearthed 3 stone rooms, and steles of the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), etc. Later, he continuously found many carved stones with portraits on them. At present, except the two of these stones in foreign countries and two kept in Jining City, there are still one pair of steles, a pair of stone lions, two tablets, 43 stones with portraits, and about 1,000 characters of inscriptions written in official script.

The portraits on the steles are carved in an accurate and meticulous way. The subjects are wide-ranging, including historical figures of distinct characteristics such as Shennongshi (Supernatural Farmer) plowing the land with a shovel in hand, Xiayu (the Great Yu of the Xia Dynasty) leading people to construct watercourses, tyrant Emperor Jie of the Xia Dynasty (21^stcentury - 17^thcentury BC) riding on women with weapon on his shoulder; popular historical stories such as Cao Mo assassinating Emperor Huandi, Zhuan Zhu assassinating Wang Liao, Jing Ke assassinating Qin Emperor Shihuang, and so on; as well as filial stories and other stories of spirited women, fairy tales, parties, haunting, travels, fighting, etc. With so many people in the paintings, the portraits are delicately carved, mirroring abundant historical information about the social condition, local customs, laws and regulations, and religious beliefs, etc., in the Eastern Han Dynasty. They are not only a series of marvelous stone carvings, but also important historical materials for study on the history of the Eastern Han Dynasty. They are praised by archaeologists and historians as the representative works of carved stones with portraits in the Han Dynasty.