China Guide
The Yellow River
Confucius Temple
Address: Entrances in the southern wall and on Queli Lu, just west of the mansion
Opening time: Daily 8.10am–4.30pm
Price: ¥52
The Confucius Temple ranks with Beijing's Forbidden City and the summer resort of Chengde as one of the three great classical architectural complexes in China. It's certainly big: there are 466 rooms, and it's over 1km long, laid out in the design of an imperial palace, with nine courtyards on a north– south axis. It wasn't always so grand, first established as a three-room temple in 478 BC, containing a few of Confucius's lowly possessions: some hats, a zither and a carriage. In 539, Emperor Jing Di had the complex renovated, starting a trend, and from then on, emperors keen to show their veneration for the sage – and ostentatiously to display their piety to posterity – renovated and expanded the complex for more than two thousand years. Most of the present structure is Ming and Qing.
The Hall of Great Achievements is the temple's grandest building, its most striking feature being 28 stone pillars carved with bas-relief dragons, dating from around 1500. Each pillar has nine gorgeous dragons, coiling around clouds and pearls towards the roof. There is nothing comparable in the Forbidden City in Beijing, and when emperors came to visit, the columns were covered with yellow silk to prevent imperial jealousy.
In the eastern axis of the temple is the famous Lu Wall, where Kong Fu, a ninth-generation descendant of Confucius, hid the sage's books when Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor, persecuted the followers of Confucius and burned all his books. Several decades later, Liu Yu, son of the Emperor Jing Di, ordered Confucius's dwelling to be demolished in order to build an extension to his palace, whereupon the books were found. Nearby, an unobtrusive gate leads to the legendary site of Confucius's home, sandwiched between the spectacular temple and the magnificent mansion, a tiny square of land, just big enough to have held a couple of poky little rooms.