In traditional Chinese customs, paying homage to the ancestor (ancestor worship) is a major event. The Spring Festival holiday is long. On the seventh day of the lunar New Year, before the ancestral grave, the ancestor should be informed of the year’s experience and major events and pray for the ancestor’s blessing in the coming year. Family harmony, career success, success. This day is also a good time to erect monuments and tombs.
Modern cemeteries have been transformed. At the entrance of the cemetery, there are detailed cemetery and tombstone introductions, lawn monuments, ecological festival monuments, small monuments, large monuments, family monuments and so on. Among them, the small monument area is the largest, the name is "Tianrong District", which means one of the same glory with the sky. So how to write small tombstone inscriptions is also a problem. According to the different writing methods, the text and font colors are also different. I found a few representative ones for your reference.
This stele is a joint funeral stele. The two characters "Anhai" are engraved on the left and right corners of the top of the stele. This is the name of the place, indicating the hometown of the deceased. Below is the word "顕". Traditions. The font on the lower side is divided into two sides, with the back facing the tombstone, the left side is the beginning of the word "kao", which is the honorary name of the child to the deceased father, and the right side is "妣", which is the honorary name of the child to the deceased mother. Under the test of the concubine, it is the surname, and under the surname is the name of "taboo". In traditional culture, children cannot directly call their parents' full names. Men use "gender" and women use "s". Continue down, for each name, at the bottom is a "tomb" in the center. This tombstone adopts a very traditional writing method with a relatively fixed format, which is the most commonly used writing method.
This tombstone adds the word "民" at the top. This is the earliest traditional writing method, which is different from the different writing methods of officials, officials, merchants, slaves, and servants. In ancient times, especially in the Ming Dynasty, the son inherited the father's inheritance and the father was The blacksmith, the son must also be a blacksmith, the identity accompanies people throughout their lives, and the people are their identity. The hometown "Yanling" is engraved on the left and right sides of the top. Because it is for the people, it does not write "show" or "first". At the bottom, write the word "Jiacheng" in the middle. These two words mean tomb in ancient Chinese. In Fujian, Guangdong, and Taiwan, this is often used instead of the word "tomb".
If one party is dead and one is still there, this inscription will be used. On the top, the word "common" will be engraved. Together, it means sharing. The common meaning is the meaning of the monument. Those who are not dead will cover their names with tape, and the text will be written in the same way as above. There is an elegiac couplet on the left and right sides: doing good deeds in life, staying famous for the ages, carved on the left and right pillars.
This is the children’s stele. Under the porcelain photo, the name plus the tomb is simple, Bodhisattva, but the pain of losing a child is integrated into these words, as if it weighs thousands of pounds. This is the simplest way of writing. It is also commonly used by modern people.
This is the ancestral tombstone of the Huang family in Ziyun, with the word "Qing" on the top, meaning Qingming and innocence. Above the name, Shaosheng and Honggu are aliases, and in the middle of the bottom is "ancestral tomb"
In the cemetery, there are many tombstones of Christians. The biggest feature is that there is a golden cross in the middle. The integration of these crosses and others, like cultural tolerance, is open to all rivers.
When I left, I was full of rewards. The art of inscriptions was too complicated and convoluted, too simple and too plain, and there is always regret. Perhaps Xidong is better without asking, sincere, no regrets.
