Qufu allows visitors to experience the full customs of the Lu kingdom during the Spring and Autumn period.
The narrator shoots arrows then shows how corn was ground to make corn meal. There is also a demonstration on how people cooked followed with a Confucian lunch.
Confucius said meat had to be prepared a certain way and that diet must be balanced.
He was also firm about eating in silence.
It is said that Confucius taught his son under a Ginkgo tree, because he loved reading and pondering under one of the trees.
To the north of Qufu is the family cemetery where Confucius and his decendants are buried.
It is the oldest family cemetery in the world. The cemetery is 1.5 times the size of the ancient city of Qufu.
It is estimated that there are more than 100,000 grave mounds and over 3,600 cemetery tablets were constructed.
Confucius had a deep interest in paying respect to heaven and the ancestors.
The Spring and Autumn Period during the time of Confucius was chaotic, but it was during this turbulence that Confucianism slowly wove itself into the fabric of Chinese culture.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Ancient trees with many birds surround the Confucius temple.
The platform where Confucius taught his students is called the Apricot Platform since there were once many apricot trees on the site.
Before Confucius, only the elite were allowed to receive an education. However, Confucius believed that education should be available to everyone.
He also believed that education shouldn’t be just for knowledge but to also cultivate good people.
Modern Qufu has cars, motorcycles, bicycles and a special mode of transportation, which the narrator of the video will show you.
If you visit Qufu, the three main attractions are included in the UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
The Confucian mansion is next to the temple and was the resident of Confucius’s decedents. The mansion contains 460 rooms. The narrator takes you on a brief tour.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
The Zhou Dynasty (1126 – 222 B.C.) was still around when China’s Spring and Autumn Period arrived, but the Zhou king had lost his power to the nobles who often fought wars with each other.
During this time, Confucius lived in Qufu, in Southwest Shandong Province, which was once the capital of the Lu Kingdom.
There were 150 kingdoms competing with each other. Constant warfare meant chaos and anarchy.
However, during the 5th and 6th centuries there was a period of learning around the world. In Greece, there was Pythagoras, Sakyamuni (Buddhism) Nepal, and Confucianism was established in Qufu, China.
Today, Qufu’s ancient city opens each weekend with a large ceremony before tourists are allowed to visit.
Confucius home is inside the ancient city walls. Two years after Confucius died, the king of Lu turned his home into a temple to honor the sage.
To continue honoring Confucius, emperors of the Han, Sung, Ming and Qing Dynasties had more buildings built on the site of the original temple.
Sacrificial ceremonies have been held there for more than two thousand years.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
In 986 A.D., a Sung Dynasty emperor ordered that an encyclopedia be written.
This ancient encyclopedia is known as the Four Great Books of Song (宋四大书), which was compiled by Li Fang (925 – 996 A.D.) and other scholars during the Sung Dynasty (960–1279 A.D.).
The last book (Cefu Yuangui) was finished during the 11th century. The four encyclopedias were published with the intent to collect all known knowledge of the time. Source: History Cultural China
There were one thousand scrolls with 2,200 biographical entries.
This ancient example of the literary world printed about a thousand years ago was commissioned by Vice Primer Zhou Bida (Sung Dynasty), who had a group of scholars proof read the original copy of the encyclopedia before block printing it.
Surviving copies are kept in China’s national library. Bookworms, who over the years fed on the paper, scarred the original encyclopedias.
Although there are textual errors, the work is still valuable for historical research.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
If you want to subscribe to this Blog, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Unlike India, China’s one party political system allows for quick decisions that often benefit the country.
Another important factor to remember is that China is still a collectivist nation as India is.
Due to this fact, China and India have more in common than India and America.
It does not matter that India is considered the world’s largest democracy, because to counter that, India also has a large bureaucracy that makes it difficult to get things done.
However, in India, the bureaucracy has a reputation for being tremendously arrogant. It is a truism that Indian bureaucrats are generally smug and supercilious… source: Open India
Indian bureaucracy has often been criticized for being cumbersome and stretching procedures to sanction projects. Source: Meri News
Unlike India, China’s one party political system allows for quick decisions that often benefit the country.
Another important factor to remember is that China is still a collectivist nation as India is.
Due to this fact, China and India have more in common than India and America.
It does not matter that India is considered the world’s largest democracy, because to counter that, India also has a large bureaucracy that makes it difficult to get things done.
However, in India, the bureaucracy has a reputation for being tremendously arrogant. It is a truism that Indian bureaucrats are generally smug and supercilious… source: Open India
Indian bureaucracy has often been criticized for being cumbersome and stretching procedures to sanction projects. Source: Meri News
A friend, Tom Carter, while shooting his next book in India, discovered that it was easier to travel and stay in China than India.
A study of Individualist and collectivist orientations across occupational groups in India by Anjali Ghosh where he refers to a study by Sinha & Verma (1994) … that master’s-level students express more idiocentric (individualist) orientations than allocentric (collectivist) due to Western influence, immediate life concerns and exposure to mass media.
However, Verma & Triandis (1999) observed that Indian students were more vertical collectivist than U.S. students were.
Another fact is that China and India both have ancient civilizations more than 5,000 years old and they are next-door neighbors as Canada and the US are.
A friend, Tom Carter, while shooting his next book in India, discovered that it was easier to travel and stay in China than India.
A study of Individualist and collectivist orientations across occupational groups in India by Anjali Ghosh where he refers to a study by Sinha & Verma (1994) … that master’s-level students express more idiocentric (individualist) orientations than allocentric (collectivist) due to Western influence, immediate life concerns and exposure to mass media.
However, Verma & Triandis (1999) observed that Indian students were more vertical collectivist than U.S. students were.
Another fact is that China and India both have ancient civilizations more than 5,000 years old and they are next-door neighbors as Canada and the US are.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.
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