Drawing a lesson from the fall of the Qin, Han rulers ran the country by adopting Confucianism, a philosophy centered on idealistic benevolence. The official veneration of Confucius lent the fact that almost half of surviving Han steles, including this one, are from Shandong, his home state.

This is September fifth, the second year of Yongshou (156 AD). Social norm that started by Fu Xi did not change till Confucius, the hodiernal sage, to whose doctrine the Han was found, and whose teaching everyone has admired. In appreciation of favors received, Han Chi, the Governor of Lu (Shandong), exempted sage's kin on the side of his mother and wife from tax and service. Seeing that rite has been neglected since Qin's heterodoxy, and that sage's carriages became irreparable and his farmland lay in waste, the governor restored ritual implements for sage's temple, renovated his old residence, rebuilt his carriages, and dredged blocked canals. All these were done without extravagance. To show respect to the governor's solicitude and to pass his good name to future generations, squires from miles around contributed to this monument.

This inscription shows typical features of clerical style. Its flat characters are referred to the shape of turtle shell, and its forceful right-falling strokes to the shape of silkworm head and swallow tail. Its stroke technique progressed into a sophisticated framework, which was then adopted by regular script, and its brushwork is at once disciplined and unconstrained, by which it is held the best example of clerical writing. “All the script conceptions of Han steles are fathomable but this one. It is like the star in the sky - within the sight but beyond the reach,” praised Guo Zongchang, an epigrapher of Qing dynasty.