Brick-walled tombs were popular in the Song Dynasty, while stone coffins were relatively rare, mainly concentrated in the southwest and northeast regions. People in the Song Dynasty regarded death as life, and the tombs must have the same carvings and objects as the houses they lived in during their lifetimes. Therefore, the tombs in the Song Dynasty were mostly imitation wood buildings with exquisite patterns and text carvings. In the Song Dynasty, a strange burial custom was popular. Couples were buried together in a two-chamber tomb, but the two chambers were separated by a partition wall. Su Dongpo, a scholar in the Song Dynasty, called it "burial in the same grave but different burials." The tombs of the Song Dynasty are shaped like a house structure, with windows, doors, beams and columns, and the patterns on the tomb walls are carved to imitate the wood structure. This is a major feature of the tombs of the Song Dynasty.
The tombs of the Song Dynasty are all located in the north and face south. There are three types of tomb passages: vertical caves, slopes and stepped slopes. The tomb chambers are mostly rectangular with rounded corners, but the scale is not as large as that of the Han and Tang Dynasties. Brick tombs are customarily decorated with carved bricks, and the tomb murals are exquisite and elegant, and mostly show scenes from the life of the tomb owner. In addition, the caisson roof of the tomb is located directly above the tomb, which is also a typical feature of Song tombs. Many of the tomb walls are also carved with pictures of phoenixes, chrysanthemums, fairy grass and other patterns, but the patterns carved on the tomb walls are mainly lotus. Comparatively speaking, the structure of the Ming and Qing tombs is relatively simple, far less complex than the Song tombs, and the carvings are mainly made of vanilla.
In the selection of the location of the tombs, the tombs of the Song Dynasty are different from those of the previous dynasties. Taking the imperial tombs as an example, the terrain selection of the imperial tombs of the Song Dynasty is very different from that of other generations. The imperial mausoleums of the past dynasties were either located high up, or nestled against mountains and rivers. However, the Song mausoleum was on the contrary. It faced Songshan Mountain and had Luoshui River on its back. The topography of each mausoleum was high in the south and low in the north, with the mausoleum at the lowest point. It turns out that in the Song Dynasty, the "Five Sounds and Surnames" Feng Shui technique was popular in the Song Dynasty, which was related to the house painting technique of the Han Dynasty. This Feng Shui technique divided the surnames into five tones according to the five elements, and then selected auspicious directions according to the sounds. The surname of the emperor of the Song Dynasty is Zhao, which belongs to the sound of "jiao", which is conducive to the direction of Ren and Bing. It must be "the sky is dome in the southeast and the ground is hanging in the northwest." Therefore, the terrain of all tombs in the Song Dynasty was high in the southeast and low in the northwest.