Confucius

The university arranged a trip to Qufu yesterday for the foreign teachers. So off we went in a small bus, a couple of Danish students studying here for a semester, their teacher, his wife and their visiting family (son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren), the Russian teachers and the Canadian contingent.

We travelled 2 hours to get there and we were able to catch a glimpse of the landscape outside the bustling city of Jinan. Everywhere, there were rows and rows of apartment buildings, and factories. We also saw many farmers tending to their terraced land.

The highways that we traveled were full of transport trucks laden with goods. Three things we noticed that were different than Canada. First, the idea of slow vehicles keeping right does not exist here. Often, you would see three big trucks blocking all three lanes of the highway but going slower than the speed of traffic. Second, and related to the first, when your vehicle approaches these trucks at high speeds, the only obvious choice is to pass on the right, on the shoulder. Passing on the left did not seem to be common. Third, in Canada drivers tend to shoulder check before making a single lane change. Here, high speed vehicles will swerve from the left hand lane across three lanes of traffic and then pass on the shoulder. What does this all mean? Imagine a cross between a huge convoy of trucks on the 401 and F1 racing. What are you left with? The Chinese highway system. If you think only small vehicles do this, think again. Our bus did it for most of the trip. It truly is organized chaos. Don watched and worried while I slept. Good thing. Don can't wait to get out on the highways again.

Qufu is a growing city too and even the walled area surrounding the birthplace of Confucius is getting modernized. The English tour guide, Ben, led us through many highlights of the grounds: the Confucius Temple, Confucius Mansions, the family living quarters, the gardens and the tomb of Confucius in the Confucius Forest, or family cemetery.

At the forest, Ben gave us a choice to walk or take a trolley bus. We voted to take the bus so that we could see more of the forest because it covers a vast 200 hectares. The Kong family, Confucius’ descendants, has been buried here over the past 2000 years and is still being buried there today. We saw a small group there honouring their ancestor and our cart drove by as a woman was bowing deeply to the ground while on her knees. This sight was both fascinating and comforting to me. I don’t ever remember seeing people bow so deeply before, head to the ground. It was comforting because I understood the tradition, having done that at my own ancestors’ graves.

All along the way there were vendors who enthusiastically called out “Hello” in near perfect English. I never heard more than that from most of them though. There were hundreds of stalls selling mostly the same products though. The most popular were stamps they could carve your name on and there would be signs advertising “Finalworkcompletin5minutes”, all one word, every single one of them. The only thing that changed was the amount of time and one would have to assume the quality of your name. We were also treated to lunch at a modern hotel and during lunch they even had a show.

Our overall impression was that much of the original beauty of this place was destroyed and we were seeing mostly replicas. Still, we enjoyed the outing and the relative tranquility the town offered.

Click here to get to our pics from the day.

http://www.flickr.com/gp/22798130@N07/owF497