The An Bing Family Mausoleum

Off-season: 09:00–16:30 daily Peak season: 09:00–17:00 daily Closed every Monday

Free of charge

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Guang'an lies in the transitional zone between the basin bottom and mountainous periphery of the Sichuan Basin, with terrain rising gradually from west to east. It has a subtropical humid monsoon climate with mild temperatures and high humidity. The annual average temperature stands at about 17°C, and the average annual precipitation reaches 1,216 millimeters. Winters and springs are warm and dry, summers hot and rainy, and autumns feature continuous drizzling rains.

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Guang'an boasts an extensive highway network. Both the total mileage and average density of highways within the city exceed national and Sichuan provincial averages. The Guang'an-Linshui section of the Guang'an-Chongqing Expressway is open to traffic, and all remaining sections were fully completed before 2004. It takes just one hour to drive from Guang'an to Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport for air travel connections. After the Guang'an-Nanchong segment of the Shanghai-Chengdu Expressway opened to traffic in 2004, the drive from Guang'an to Chengdu only takes 2.5 hours. The planned Nanchong-Chongqing Expressway will pass through Wusheng County. Upon completion, expressways will connect all counties, county-level cities and districts of Guang'an, integrating the city into the Chengdu-Chongqing-Shanghai tourism and economic belt.

Three national highways run through Guang'an: G210, G212 and G334. Four provincial highways including the Shizhu-Nanchong route, as well as two county highways (Yuechi-Wusheng Road and Guang'an-Wusheng Road) traverse the region. Interwoven national, provincial and county highways form a transportation framework known as "Three Horizontal Arteries and Four Vertical Arteries", with railways and highways as its backbone. Nowadays, it takes at most 30 minutes by car from downtown Guang'an to any county, city or district under its jurisdiction, a renowned local infrastructure project dubbed the "Half-Hour Access Project".

The An Bing Family Mausoleum is located in Zhaoxun Village, Shuanghe Town, Huaying City, Sichuan Province. It is the burial ground of An Bing, Grand Tutor and Pacification Commissioner of Sichuan during the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279 AD), and his clan.

Covering around 100 mu, the mausoleum complex boasts a grand scale, with five tombs excavated to date. A great number of exquisite high-relief stone carvings and colored murals have been unearthed inside the tombs, featuring vivid and lifelike imagery unparalleled in craftsmanship.

The stone carvings cover a wide range of themes: human figures, animals, plants, architecture, mythical beasts, weapons, musical instruments and more. Many fine cultural relics were unearthed here, including gold, silver and copper coins; artifacts made of gold, silver, bronze, jade and pottery; plus a large collection of tri-color glazed figurines. An epitaph tablet with more than 5,000 inscribed characters was also found in An Bing’s tomb, recording his life story in great detail. Remains of surface buildings on the mausoleum grounds include drainage ditches, stone elephant sculptures, stone steps and decorative carvings.

Extremely well-preserved, the An Bing Family Mausoleum ranks as China’s best-preserved, largest, highest-ranked and most artistically valuable Song-dynasty clan mausoleum discovered so far. The abundant delicate stone carvings and precious relics unearthed here represent the finest cultural artifacts of the 13th century. They carry immense research value for the study of Southern Song architecture, fine arts, music and history, serving as irreplaceable first-hand materials for understanding politics, economy, military affairs and culture in Sichuan during the Southern Song period.