It’s the weekend! School is out and fun is in!
This day, we were in for a historical treat as we were going to visit Qufu, the hometown of Confucius. As it is situated quite a distance away from our hotel, we had to wake up extra early (5am) to travel there. Nevertheless, it was definitely something to look forward to after 5 days of sand, stones and cement!
Qufu, the legendary birthplace of the great Chinese thinker and social philosopher Confucius, has 3 main attractions: the Confucius Temple （孔庙）, Confucius Cemetery（孔林） and the Kong Family Mansion （孔府）. Under the detailed explanation by our tour guide, we learnt about how Confucius lived and where he worked, with reference to the many ancient chinese architecture that we visited. An interesting point to note is that there is a huge difference between state of environment outside and inside the walls of these 3 places. Being listed as a UNESCO’s World Heritage Site, these 3 places are especially clean and well maintained, as compared to the less developed area outside the perimeters of the wall where the locals lived.
When we visited the Confucius Cemetery, we had to walk through a long street lined with stalls selling souvenirs. The variety of tourist must-buys had us losing ourselves hopping from stall to stall, bargaining our way through the souvenirs that appealed to us. Highlights include traditional Chinese seals, where the stall owners would carve out our names on-the-spot and handheld fans with chinese sayings and poems written in ink on them. Interestingly, a painter who had set up a stall right beside Confucius’ tomb actually turned out to be the 75th generation of the Kong Family. Amongst out “oooh”s and “aaah”s many of us fell for the paintings as he painted them on-the-spot and decided to buy them.
At the end of the day, though exhausted from all that walking and bus travelling, we all agreed that it was, without doubt, an enriching experience and a much needed break from construction work.
Nicholas