Wang Chong’s Tomb

Wang Chong’s Tomb is located in Shangyu, a county-level city under the administration of Shaoxing. The tomb was restored in 1855 but it was destroyed afterwards. In 1981, the local government restored it. It is round and built with black stones. It is 2 meters high. The gravestone set in front of the tomb is the original one. It is engraved with nine characters, which read “The Tomb for Mr. Wang Chong of Han Dynasty.” There is a small forest of tea trees in front of the tomb.

Wang Chong was a remarkable materialistic ideologist and educationist in East Han Dynasty. In East Han Dynasty, a period of 200 years, there were only three people who could be honored as ideologists. Wang Chong was one of the three. He wrote Lun Heng, a book in which he made sharp comments on many hot academic problems of the day, especially some bad customs. Many of his opinions hit the point and made a stir in the nation. But due to the fact that he expressed his suspicion of and challenged the widely-accepted Confucianism, which was considered to be sacred by most of Chinese, he was taken as a man of sin.