Lu Zhuangzhang’s Tomb

The tomb is located in a Christian cemetery in the west of Jimu Hill on Gulangyu Island. Lu Zhuangzhang (1854-1928), originally known as Dan, and otherwise known as Xue Qiao (i.e. his courtesy name), was a native of Guzhuang Town, Tong’an, Xiamen. He was a famous modern-time pioneer in the reform of the Chinese language and dedicated his whole life to the reform and philological research. He was the author of, among others, Yimuliaoran Chujie, the first scholar to propose a pinyin-based spelling system for the Chinese language, and a pioneer in advocating standard Mandarin, horizontal writing, Western-style punctuation marks, and Simplified characters. For these, he was highly regarded by then Premier Zhou Enlai and the academia. He lived the latter years of his life on Gulangyu Island. Heading towards the northwest, the late scholar’s tomb is rectangular and covers 2.5 square meters, and his tombstone, which is 0.72 meters high, 0.42 meters wide, and 0.08 meters thick, is made of diabase, with a rounded top. It features quite a few inscriptions, i.e. a slightly curved one reading “Creator of New Chinese Characters” on its top, one reading “Sir Lu Zhuangzhang’s Tomb” in the middle, one of his dates of birth and death on the right, and one listing the names of his offspring on the left. All texts are engraved in the clerical style.