Mount. Tai Tour: Packages for Taishan Tour with a Visit to the Confusius' Hometown of Qufu

The Kong Family Mansion, otherwise known as Kongfu. It is the place where Confucius’ descendants lived in. In Chinese history, Confucius’ descendants were called “Yanshenggong.” Confucius’ descendants strictly kept their family rules and rituals. By the influence of Confucian rituals, the buildings were designed with the standards and routines of the Confucian patriarchal system and ethics. Kong Family Mansion was created precisely as Chinese traditions of “the hall in front, the living room in the back.” The front hall was divided into three individual spaces, which were “Guanya” – the place for work, “Dongxue” – the site for the reception, and “Xixue” – the place for entertainment. The living rooms were designed for daily lives.
 

The scale of the Kong Family Mansion is enormous. It is almost as large as the mansions of the emperors in the Ming Dynasty (1364-1683) and the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). There were more than 170 buildings with more than 560 rooms at the very beginning but remained 152 buildings with 480 rooms now. Some of these buildings were damaged and destroyed in history. Lots of precious historical relics were preserved in Kong Family Mansion: Calligraphies of the emperors, royal poetries, books, splendid instruments…, almost everything was bestowed to Confucius and his descendants. The emperors of past dynasties showed their honors to them. And Confucius’ descendants had got into the habit of collecting the ancient relics to enrich the relics collection.
 

Temple of Confucius, one of the most renowned Confucius temples in China, is undoubtedly among the most important. Temple of Confucius was built to worship Confucius (September 28, 551 BC – 479 BC), the Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese thought and life by Chinese Feudal dynasty. It is a group of grand, majestic, oriental-featured ancient buildings. It is the second-largest scale ancient Chinese buildings (the largest one is the Forbidden City in Beijing). 

The temple, now listed as China’s Top Three Ancient Buildings (the other two are: the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Summer Resort in Chengde), plays a vital role in the world’s architecture history. It was built at the site of Confucius’ former residence with a standard of ancient Chinese imperial palace.

Confucius died in April 479 BC and was buried in the north of Lu City (now called Qufu) where his descendants were also buried after their deaths. More than 1,000 trees were planted since the first tree planted by Zigong – one of Confucius’ favorite pupils. The Cemetery of Confucius was repaired and rebuilt 13 times by the emperors of many Chinese dynasties sine Han Dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD) and finally shaped its scale of two square kilometers with a protection wall of 5.6 kilometers in length, more than three meters in height and one meter in thickness.
 

Guo Moruo (1892-1978), one of the most famous Chinese modern writers praised:” The Cemetery of Confucius is one of the best nature museums as well as the annals of Confucius’ family.” Nowadays, the Cemetery of Confucius has played an important role for analyzing the development of Chinese ancient politics, economy and culture as well as the changes of Chinese funeral customs.