The story goes that Ting Lan of the Han dynasty served his parents with the utmost filial piety, and when both died prematurely he was moved by grief to carve wooden images of his parents for veneration in the ancestral temple.
相傳漢代丁蘭事親至孝，父母卻又不幸早逝，丁蘭思親心切，遂以木頭雕刻父母偶像，供奉於堂上。