The Stone Shrine at the Guo Family Mausoleum is on the Xiaotang Hill in Xiaolipu, Changqing County, Shandong Province.

The Xiaotang Hill, with a height of about 30 meters, was named Wu Hill in ancient times. Because of a stone shrine, the hill became famous since the Southern and Northern Dynasties (386-581). The Dutiful Son Temple was the grave ancestral temple of a dutiful son named Guo Ju, who lived in the early years of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220). That is the oldest extant ground building in China.

Backing the north and facing the south, the stone shrine covers a rectangular area with a width of 3.8 meters, a depth of 2.13 meters and a height of 2.63 meters. The wall is 0.20 meters thick and all built of black stones. In the center of the temple stands a 0.86-meter-high octagonal stone pillar. The two ends of the pillar are in the shape of pyramid.

Variety of architectural components in this ancestral temple is simply decorated with engraved patterns of Tibetan style, lowered curtain and water chestnut. The stone walls and triangular stone girders are engraved with exquisite pictures, of which the content includes legend tales, historic stories, chronometer and astrology, monarch hearing, traveling, receiving guests, fighting campaigns, hunting, cooking and recreations. The engraving skills were mainly plane line engraving, which was quite unique in the stone pictures in the Han Dynasty.

Many inscriptions of the tourists from the Han (206BC-220AD) to Tang (618-907) Dynasties are still preserved in this ancestral temple, of which the earliest two were respectively made in the fourth year (129) of the Yongjian reign and the first year (167) of the Yongkang reign in the Eastern Han Dynasty. On the outer side of the gable of the ancestral temple was engraved Gan Xiao Song (the Odes to Moving Filial Piety) written by the King of Longdong in the Northern Qi Dynasty (550-577), which has a pretty high value in the history of culture and calligraphic art.

The Stone Shrine at Guo Ju's Family Mausoleum has a very high historic and artistic value. Therefore it was first recorded in the famous work Catalogue of Inscriptions on Stone and Bone written by Zhao Mingcheng, a famous epigraphist in the Song Dynasty (960-1279), and later was recorded in many other books. However, the exact year of the construction of the building still remains unknown.

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