Chinese Funerary BiographiesTens of thousands of epitaphs, or funerary biographies, survive from imperial China. Engraved on stone and placed in a grave, they typically focus on the deceaseds biography and exemplary words and deeds, expressing the survivors longing for the dead. These epitaphs provide glimpses of the lives of women, men who did not leave a mark politically, and childrenpeople who are not well documented in more conventional sources such as dynastic histories and