Qufu (Hometown of Confucius)

What are these things? 

Woke up in Tai’an, and got some twisty donuts for breakfast. A few of the girls went looking for a bakery, and found those on a street. Everyone back at the hotel decided that thay looked pretty good so all 19 of trooped over to the stand and just about bought them out. Hopped in taxis to the bus station (I’m really going to miss cheap, mass transportation), and watched the scenery roll by on our 40 minute ride to Qufu.

Qufu was Confucius’ hometown. And that’s about all I know. 🙂

This is mostly going to be a picture post, because unfortunately other than what I read off the few English signs scattered around I don’t have a lot of info on the area.

The entrance to Confucius mansion.

The area was surrounded by a wall, so there were quite a few buildings and mini streets inside. Here’s one that I couldn’t resist turning into HDR.

I have quite a few pictures of the ceilings. I think it’s really interesting the way they’re put together.

You have to watch your step when you go through any entrance. The high step is to keep out ghosts, who apparently can’t jump. Or step over things.

The mansion wasn’t really boring per se, but had I been there just by myself I would have definitely hired a guide to show me around. It was relaxing though, and it was fun hanging out with my friends.

After the mansions we turned a corner (they’re pretty much right next to each other) and explored the temple. It was pretty busy when we first went in (darn those Chinese holidays!) but we were there the last 2 hours before closing so at the end there it was very empty and almost serene.

There were probably over a dozen of these turtle steles in various places. You can’t tell here but they are completely engraved with characters. Though I think the fact that the turtle has fangs is infinitely cooler.

I took the photos for the pano at a really weird angle so photoshop wasn’t sure how to fix it. In case you were wondering, the building is not actually curved like that. 😉 It was the largest building in the area, but you couldn’t go inside.

Until I learn otherwise I’m just going to assume those things hanging in the back are sweet ancient Chinese grenades.

According to the sign Confucius scholars are ‘buried’ in those shrine lookin’ things.

There is no such thing as too many dragons.

While we were in (or outside, I can’t remember which) we saw a white guy about our age. It’d been about a month since our Shanghai trip, and we’d seen only one other white person in Weihai that whole time (a teacher at the other international school) so we may have sort of gawked at him a bit. We weren’t sure what to do either. Do we ignore him? Do we go up and talk to him? What do we do? As we were deciding a Chinese girl walked up to him, and from the  way it looked we thought they were probably a couple. They walked in a different direction, solving our problem. Finished up in the temple, met the rest of the group outside the walls and wandered around the market area for a bit. Bought a grain of rice with my name written on it, and bilingual Analects of Confucius. Ate, slept, then hopped on a train back to Ji’nan where we took another train back to Weihai. This was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip. Instead of it being boring night like our sleeper bus to Shanghai I actually got to see the countryside!

Our train back to Weihai.

The only downside about looking out the window is I see all these awesome places for about 5 seconds, maybe snap a picture if I’m quick enough, then sit there and wonder what they are. Like that white thing on the left that looks like it’s out of a fantasy novel. What is it? I want to go there and find out so badly it’s not even funny. *tragic sigh*

We passed miles and miles of factories.

Greenhouses for as far as the eye can see.

And most of the trip was farmlands sprinkled with tiny villages and towns. It did get repetitive after awhile, but never boring. I did unglue myself from the window long enough to play a card game called Egyptian Rat Screw that is sort of like Slap Jack only confusing at first. Our section of the car did get a little crazy (9 hours in the same seats is a really long time, in case you weren’t aware), but I think it’s safe to say that we entertained the other passengers.

Overall it was a quite, relaxing day that I really enjoyed. Even though I didn’t know much about my surroundings, it was fantastic just to be surrounded by buildings that were hundreds of years old. To all the kids out there, don’t believe anyone who says history is boring. They’re just flat out wrong.

 

New favorite song. And it’s not even Korean!