Qufu aka: 曲阜,Temple and Cemetery of Confucius

A Chinese colleague suggested we visit this place, and I’m grateful for the recommendation. For 105 yuan, you can get tickets for three separate sites: the Confucius Temple, the Kong family compound (“Confucius” is an Anglicization of the name Kong Fu Zi), and the family cemetery, where over 100,000 descendants of Confucius’ ancestors have been buried.

The Temple is the largest attraction and the largest temple of its kind in the world. It’s a big compound of multiple gates, temple buildings, and ancient gnarled trees. Fascinating, both bustling with tourists and pleasantly peaceful. Many of the large carved stone stele were toppled during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, but have been pretty well restored.

The family compound is a warren of buildings adjacent to the Temple complex. The warm brick buildings enclose something like 463 rooms in which ancestors of Confucius lived as local royalty.

Finally, the cemetery is a sprawling forest of junipers, cypress, and who knows what else – it’s an act of veneration to plant a tree in this place, and there are an estimated 100,000 species here. It’s a short drive from the other two attractions and is located just outside the northern gate of the city. The forest floor is a continuous mass of burial mounds, some with markers, but the great majority simply topped with the natural forest ground cover.

The only downside to the whole place is an abundance of extremely aggressive hawkers of guides, souvenirs, and assorted consumer crap.