Dozens of centuries-old tombstones, boundary tablets, and stone tables upon which to offer sacrifices have been sent from Tangjiawan to the Zhuhai Museum for research on burial customs and evolution.

The tombs had been relocated from a construction site off Tangnan Road to the Mashan Mt Ancient Tomb Cluster in the early years of the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone. Back then, the land of Tangjia Town was leveled to build roads and factories.

Most of the tombs were scattered on the hillside north of the Zhongshan University Zhuhai campus. They had been rebuilt the same as the originals, and a few had been merged. The museum staff sorted out 28 cultural relics from them.

Tombstones [Photo by Cai Huanhuan for Zhuhai Daily]

The tombstones are made of granite and concrete. They feature a time span from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) to the Republic of China (1912-1949) and the People's Republic of China. All the entombed males were surnamed Tang, while the females had the names Liang, Huang, Chen, She, Zhuo and others, according to some still-visible inscriptions.

For instance, one tombstone, which is 102 cm (3.3 ft) long, 37 m (1.2 ft) wide and 9.5 cm (.3 ft) high, belongs to a mother, surnamed Lu, of a fifth-rank official in the Qing Dynasty. A more recent concrete tombstone, 84.5 cm (2.8 ft) in length, 35.5 cm (1.2 ft) in width and 12 cm (.4 ft) in height, was erected in March 1960 mourning of mothers surnamed Wu and Huang, as well as a wife surnamed Liang.