Confucius' village

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Qufu is famous for being the birthplace to the famous Chinese philosopher Confucius. It also houses the tomb of Confucius and as a result, plans to build a train station in the small town were scrapped on the basis that trains would disturb his tomb. Let me start with a bit of an introduction to Confucianism. Whilst Confucianism is not really a religion and more a philosophy, he is described and held in a similar kind of regard to the more religious figures. His philosophy in a nut shell describes the role of individuals within a larger group and guidelines on how to conduct ones relationships. He pinpoints 5 different relationships, these being: ruler and subject, husband and wife, father and son, elder and younger, and finally, friends. His works outline the way that people should behave within each relationship, but they in particular concentrate on the value of respect. Respect flowing upwards, from young to old, subject to ruler and son to father.

We arrived in Qufu at 5.30 in the morning following a seven hour train ride in the ‘cattle carriage’. For all this time we at least had seats, but in the most crowded carriage where the people who are left to stand usually like to use your heads to lean on, so they can sleep. This is not an exaggeration. So following this not so pleasant trip we arrived in nearby Yanzhou train station.

As a result we were forced to get a taxi from Yanzhou station which had a strong feeling of rip-off central. It was probably because of the early hour at which we arrived but there were a number of taxi drivers all begging for our service and you could tell that they were all eyeing up our wallets. We eventually arrived at Qufu after getting ‘lost’ (he could charge us a higher rate the more petrol he used) and endeavoured to find our hostel.

Because of the extremely early morning nowhere seemed to be open, so tired and irritable we played a game of travel scrabble on a bench. We were finally able to check into our hostel at around 8.30 in the morning and then we just slept until around 5.30 at night. Our home for the night was a three bed room (Chris was with us again) that had en-suite and was generally of good value. However it lacked just one thing, a window. This meant that when the light was turned off it was complete darkness within the room and there was no way of telling what time of day it was. However if anything this helped us sleep through the day, but did give the room a slight prison block feel to it.

That night having seen nothing of the day we ventured out to the local night market. The night markets we go to normally have a wide range of items for sale but this particular market was specialized in food. Sorry that should read ‘food’ (?). Throughout the whole market we saw only one stand that offered food that would be deemed as edible in the Western world and that was selling Kebabs at the bargain price of 1 yuan (around 7p) each. Every other stand was selling ‘foods’ (it doesn’t seem right to call them foods as on 95% of stands the produce was still alive) as tantalizing as frogs, eels, shrimps, turtles, scorpions and other bugs. At least you couldn’t question if it was fresh.

Whilst the food was not very appetizing we gorged ourselves on this Kebab meat (we didn’t know what meat this was but the only thing for certain was that it was definitely dead, which was good enough for us at this stage) and drank some beers whilst sitting back and watching the busy market go about its business. Because we had slept for most of the day we went back to our room and had a few more drinks and played drunken scrabble, until seemingly out of nowhere both Chris and Shell passed out, and I was left to enjoy the first game of the Euro 2008 championships, Switzerland versus Czech Republic.

Sunday

Being only a small village, we figured that Qufu was do-able in only a day. There are three main sites within Qufu, the Confucius temple, Confucius mansion and the Confucius forest where his tomb lays.

The first place we chose to visit was the Mansion. Within the mansions there were some nice gardens, however the ‘beauty’ of the mansion itself seemed to be a little difficult to find.

We then ventured onto the Temple. The temple complex itself was over 1 km from the front gate to the actual temple which seemed a very long way in the blistering heat that we were witnessing today. When we arrived however the temple seemed very understated which struck us as a great surprise. This is seen as the home of this set of beliefs, the Vatican of Confucianism if you want, but to have the signature temple so plain and forgettable was surprising. Whilst we were sat catching our breath in the sweltering heat, Michelle was approached by a young family asking for a photo with their young daughter. This has happened on a number of occasions and it always strikes us as odd. There is never a kind of rapport or friendship built between the two parties. When they get there photos developed or look back through them they must think, ‘there’s that white person that we know absolutely nothing about, but at least she’s white so we’ll put that one in the album.’

Finally we headed to the Confucius Forest which played host to Confucius’ tomb. This again was understated, however it felt right that a tomb should be understated. It was unfortunate however that the forest was teeming with mosquitoes which made staying any length of time there very uncomfortable. So we headed into the village to the same Kebab place as the previous night as this seemed to be the only place selling edible food.

For the train journey back we had only managed to secure 2 beds and one standing position in one of the ‘cattle carriages’. Having pulled the short straw I was left with the responsibility of standing for the whole journey back with the company of hundreds of lower class Chinese people with bad BO, bad sense of personal space and worse taste in music. I was however fortunate that after one or two stops a seat became free and after snarling at a local I managed to claim it for myself. One of the good things about being a foreigner is that when it’s advantageous to you, you can play ignorant. We try not to do that too much but standing up all the way through a seven hour train journey - it’s just not British. Probably because the trains in Britain can’t run non- stop for 7 hours. Ooh, satire.

On the whole, Qufu was a slight disappointment but we did learn a bit about Confucianism. However we also learnt a decent amount about the smaller towns in China. Everywhere else we aim to visit in China is a decent to large sized city and on the whole the amenities and infrastructure matches that. However Qufu seemed very old fashioned and behind the times. Having mentioned the food that was for sale, which literally seemed the only option, the place struck as very dirty. With dirty little children and there pets running around and people trying to sell really outdated and poor quality products. There certainly didn’t seem to be much innovation going on here that would suggest that China is going to be worlds next superpower. But then it’s places like Shanghai and Beijing that’ll decide that, not little old Qufu. Having said that Beijing’s not much better.

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