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Inhabitants agree: Jining has no soul. Now let's you and I agree: Jining is a lot like Dubai: it's a center of shopping and various skyscrapers--minus the exhiliration, the nightlife, the beaches, the internationalism, the English, the spiffy cars, and the down-to-earth Sheikh. If anything, the city strongly resembles familiar American cities such as Cincinnati, Dayton, or Columbus--if these cities had a massive coal-fired power plant. I think Jining's claim to fame is that Chairman Mao once took refuge here, sometime, for something. It's other claim to fame is that it's located next to the city of Qufu--which is the birthplace of Confucius.
You can take a bus out to Qufu--it only takes about 40 minutes, and costs about 15 RMB. This makes a nice daytrip, and this is what we decided to do on Monday. All the Foreign Teachers were supposed to go, but half of us wound up with food poisoning (I tell you, I'm getting scared to put ANYTHING in my mouth) so it was just me and my boss. It was, as it turns out, nothing to write home about, but I took some pictures I want to share, so it appears I am writing home
about it anyway.
The nice thing about Qufu is all the greenspace. I think Jining is nice sometimes, but it's frankly a concrete-and-steel labyrinth of human toil. It doesn't have the trees and parks the same way that Qufu does. It doesn't have a giant temple complex erected to Confucius, either, which was our little bit of tourism. I'll tell you about Qufu's Confucius Temple.
First of all, you have to buy an uber-expensive ticket to go in. Uber-expensive. You then proceed to pass through...not one...not two...but
three archways and then you present your ticket as you pass through the turnstyle. Then you are in the Confucius Temple. It's still not accurate to call it a temple, because it's really a complex and there are plenty of other buildings around for your general perusal and entertainment. The temple itself is in the very back, and there is a lot of incense burning and a place for you to submit good thoughts for the deceased. Everything is brightly painted. There's also an area where you can walk inside and read all about the life of Confucius and people will try to sell you meaningless objects with limited relevance to
On Top of the Wall
This is what it looked like. If you look closely, you can see the folks who assulted us with their camera. Confucius. That's it. Then you can move on and check out the rest of the architecture (I don't understand Chinese, so I don't know what most of the stuff was about). I remember that we had a hilarious discussion about the way New Yorkers of certain locales pronounce words such as "coffee", "call", and "saw". Then we walked out of the Confucius Temple.
There was time to kill, so we climbed the outer wall of the Old City (which is also the Confucius Temple Complex). It gave us sort of a view of Qufu. Also two incidents happened which I would like to mention. First, we were stopped by an older woman with two teenage sons. She insisted I pose for photos with them. My boss later said that it was impossible to tell who looked more awkward and miserable as she snapped the photos--me, or her kids. It sure will be nice to be treated like a human being again when I leave Asia. If indeed I am ever able to leave Asia. The second thing is less of an incident than it is an anecdote. My mother bought me a book at the age of three. I
idolized this book. I forced her, and my father, to read me all the captions on every page. Because I was a very strange child, this happened to be an oversized reference guide to Chinese Mountain Flowers. I am happy to report that I found some of these flowers twenty-some years later, growing on the Confucius Wall. Please see the enclosed photograph.
We spent the rest of our time on the wall seeing how far we could spit over the edge, and if it would hit anybody.
As a side note, nearly everything in Qufu seems to be named after Confucius. This includes the Confucius Temple, the Confucius Bridge, the Confucius Wall, the Confucius River, and the Confucius Park, among what are most likely many others. In Confuciusville, we also ate lunch with an old friend who used to work in Jining and we explored the (Confucius) Riverside Park. Then we took a bus home. Back to our wonderful lives in Jining. Which is where I am now.
Also, we ate Teppanyaki for dinner. It was wonderful.
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Susan
non-member comment
Hmmm. I just checked that book of yours. It could be Incarvillea younghusbandii. Are you 4500 m above sea level? Wonderful photos, Liz! Thanks for sharing.