The Town With The Big Family
Confucius Temple Entrance
Our last minute trip to Qufu this past Sunday was a success, if not without its little moments. Overall I would say that the home of Confucius is a worthwhile deviation from the standard tourist trail in China and for those of us in Shandong Province, a must do day-trip. For the DH and I, it was a respite from a boring weekend spent watching old Andromeda episodes on Youku. (China’s version of YouTube with a… let’s just say much more liberal, i.e. copyright questionable, content posting policy.) There’s really nothing like saying, “Hey, we’ve always talked about going to Qufu, but have never gotten around to it. Why don’t we?” at 4PM one afternoon and then finding yourself on a train at 6:30PM wondering what the heck you are getting yourself into!
Qufu’s Center – Drum Tower
Qufu (pronounced choo-foo) is a super small city in central Shandong Province. As you know, cities in China are generally ginormous, so the scale we might use in the West to size cities is not really relevant. My city of 3-5 million people is considered small. Qufu probably has ~100,000 people. Super small! Refreshingly small. While Linyi is a city that feels like a village, Qufu is a village that feels like a city. It has city walls, drum towers, a Chinese temple and a main drag lined with all the popular Chinese sportswear and shoe shops you’d ever want. Well, maybe that is just what the DH and I felt, especially after our year in the Shijiazhuang countryside and several years in Linyi. Those coming from far more cosmopolitan places probably won’t think so. Then again, we only spent 24 hours there, so who are we to say, really? We came, we saw, we ate, we liked.
Pedestrian Street in Qufu
It all started with a phone call to a fellow expat. “What time does the train leave for Qufu?” We thought we could go on Sunday morning and come back in the evening. When our friend said the train left at 6:30PM Saturday, a quick glance at the watch told us we had 2 1/2 hours, if we really wanted to go. Why not? We jumped up, threw the camera and a change of clothes in a backpack and headed over to the train station to see if any tickets were available. Train travel is a mysterious thing in China. You can only buy tickets four days in advance, ten days over Spring Festival, and only for trains departing that station. Tickets are hard to come by, especially at the train station ticket windows. It seems that many tickets get doled out to travel agencies and so you kind of have to ask around. Since Qufu is only 2 hours away and we didn’t have a lot of time, we didn’t worry about the travel agencies, opting to try our luck at the station. Fortunately, there was a train at 6:30, the Rizhao-Beijing overnighter that stops in both Linyi and Qufu. Unfortunately, only standing tickets were available to Qufu. Because this is a very popular train, we figured the chances of finding an actual seat on board were nil. And we were right. We spent the 2 hour journey hanging out in that space between the end of two train cars. The same spot where all the men congregate to smoke and spit. And where the loo is located. Nice…
Craftsman making steamer baskets in Qufu street
Two hours later we were standing outside a tiny station, looking at one of two cars in the parking lot and trying to decide just how the heck we were going to get to town. The Qufu station is 6km out of the center, not to be confused with the Yanzhou station, which is 16km out and the main station servicing Qufu. It seems when the rail lines were being laid the Kong family (Confucius’ descendants) worried the train would disturb the big guy’s tomb, so they requested the lines be moved away (Yanzhou.) Later, a line was laid closer (Qufu.) The Qufu station is only for slow trains. We needn’t have worried about transportation, however. Taxi drivers can smell fresh meat for miles. Before we could even discuss it, an old lady in a kerchief had shoved us in the back seat of a cab, along with a very frightened Chinese man, and negotiated an exorbitant fare with the driver, all on our behalf. We hadn’t booked a hotel. We didn’t even know the name of a place, so we pressed our luck and just told the driver to take us to a bingguan (hotel/guesthouse.) The driver took us down a few alleyways, dropping off his other two customers, and then proceeded to take us to Qufu’s finest fleabag hotel. It was cold, it was dank, but it had free Internet and cost all of $15. We jacked up the electric heater, requested more blankets and tucked ourselves into the standard-issue PRC bed. (Rock hard mattress at no extra cost!) It was only at 8:30 the next morning that we realized the room had no windows.
Qufu Street View
Outside it was cold and a little overcast. Since I had thought to rip out the three pages devoted to Qufu in my 2005 Lonely Planet China guide, we had a general idea of the city layout and a plan for seeing Qufu’s three main tourist sights (given that they hadn’t been altered in the last 5 years): the Confucius Temple, the Kong Family Mansion and the Kong Family Cemetery. To the bewilderment of every rickshaw driver in town, we walked off down main street towards the temple entrance, a feat (walking, that is) that would continue to bewilder them throughout the day. Everything in Qufu is within walking distance, so despite the cold, we walked everywhere, a practice not copied by the Chinese group tourists.
Vending machine inside the temple – you can get your water cold or hot!
The first step in visiting the tourist sites is to ignore the hawkers and vendors set up outside the temple entrance and go in the ticket office to the right. There a gaggle of enterprising English speaking tour guides will try to help you buy tickets, in hopes of being hired for the day. While I’m sure they are knowledgeable and helpful, the DH and I are not well suited to these kinds of tours. We’re much too sarcastic and silly. Besides, we like to wander off and take pictures of drainage holes, walls, cats and piles of trash. Tour guides are usually frightened. Most all of the signs throughout the three sights are in both Chinese and English, so in this case we were able to wander freely without the added pressure of making up ridiculous translations for each sign we encountered. I recommend purchasing the combo ticket for all three sights, which will set you back 150RMB. We felt this price was outrageous, but what can you do.
Most signs are in Chinese and English
Winter is the off-season in Qufu, but there were several large Chinese tour groups following a bull horn-clad guide around along with a much less conspicuous Japanese group. We were the token laowai and until later in the day when we observed a foreign backpacker holding a huge round piece of bread and attempting to take photos of it as he/she (it was hard to tell) walked down the street, we had assumed we were the only ones in town.
Small buildings housing special stone tablets
I’ve always loved the crazy creatures on Chinese roofs
The temple is a collection of courtyards, gates and large halls done in the “Forbidden City Style” of architecture and colors. The only difference between the two, in my mind, is the Forbidden City is 1) a heck of a lot bigger 2) a heck of a lot better maintained and 3) displays actual relics and furniture from the time. Qufu’s temple has seen better days – the colors on the wooden beams are faded and decaying. Everything is covered in dust. There are stone tablets everywhere, I think with carved writings of Confucius’ philosophy. Many of them show evidence of damage inflicted during China’s “burning times.” (i.e. the Cultural Revolution) Don’t visit Qufu expecting the glory of Beijing. Things haven’t been spiffed up here in a long time, although we did notice that one of the halls is under scaffolding. Some might find the lack of maintenance disheartening, especially after paying 150RMB… but we kind of liked it. The temple and mansions felt used and lived in, like they were more than just museum pieces, like we were seeing something real. (From the outside, that is. Inside every room and hall, gift shops are set up, selling fans, Confucius statues, books, tablet rubbings and, strangely, giant wooden pencils.)
Apricot hall holding more tablets
Repaired stone tablets
At the main hall, there is a large incense burner and padded cushion set up in front of a Confucius statue (no gift shop in this one.) There we observed Confucius followers praying and making offerings. This obvious devotion is not something you see everyday in Communist China. (I have seen Chinese burning incense and making offerings at a small temple on Tai Shan. One of them, a Communist Party member, told me she was praying for more money.)
Main hall with Confucius Devotees
The Big Guy
The Kong Family Mansion is next door to the temple. While the temple is all about red, the mansion is all about gray. It is a labyrinth complex of courtyards and rooms and narrow passageways connecting them. As we peered into the windows of the bedrooms and common rooms, all we could think was that the Kong family must have been freezing in Winter. At the back of the mansion is a large garden. It was pretty barren but must be really lovely in the Spring and Summer.
Kong Mansion Courtyard – why can’t I be more photogenic? why?
The back garden was a little barren
No idea why this painting in the garden was so important, but lots of people were taking photos of it
For lunch we decided to go the street food route, freaking out the locals, as usual.
Next up was a visit to the Kong Family Cemetery, where Confucius and thousands of his family members are buried. It is the largest family cemetery in the world and is still in use. If you’re a Kong, you can be buried there, too. As is standard issue at Chinese tourists sights, the entrance is lined with more souvenir stalls. “Get your own carved name stamp! Buy a fan! You need a Confucius statue! Hey! Hello! Hello! Hey!” It’s a gauntlet.
Tomb of Confucius
Inside the cemetery, it’s all about serenity. And rounded mounds of earth. And the fact that thousands and thousands of Kong surround you. It is peaceful, but also slightly creepy. The cemetery is also known as the Kong Forest, because there are thousands of trees planted here. Most tourists go straight to the Confucius tomb, snap a pic and then head back out to the safety and warmth of the hotel. There are even extended golf carts to haul them all from the entrance to the tomb. We are not most tourists and instead opted to walk the entire paved path through the cemetery. I guess that’s the reason that Monday morning I collapsed off the side of the bed when I tried to stand up. We walked a lot.
Cemetery Path
We’ve seen lots of Chinese grave sights in our four years here. In the countryside surrounding the Shijiazhuang airport, farmers buried their loved ones under mounded earth right in the middle of their fields. If you ride a train, you will see the sides of the rails lined with graves. In Linyi, the airport where we work is also surrounded by graves. Every few days we see (and hear) a funeral service. Still, there really is nothing like being in the middle of a huge cemetery, rounded mounds as far as the eyes can see. The Chinese cover their graves with mounds of earth and I heard this was to mimic the shape of the womb, but I don’t know if that is true. Here you can read more than you ever wanted on Chinese funerals. There were no funerals taking place on Sunday, but we did see two men digging a hole, which we assumed would later be used for one.
Cemetery View
We finished up all of our touring around 4PM, but our train would not leave until 7:30PM. We decided to spend a couple of hours hanging out in a youth hostel we had spotted earlier. It would have been perfect, since they had a lounge area with sofas, TV with CCTV 9 and decent coffee. The problem? The place was an ice locker. After shivering together for an hour, we gave up on the idea and walked down the street to the four star Queli Hotel for dinner. (I’ve always said that if you are in a strange city at a loss of where to hang out for a few hours while waiting for trains/buses, etc., a 4 or 5 star hotel lobby is a great place!) After another two and a half hours of standing on another train (this one far dirtier than the other), we were home.
A very rare wildlife sighting – a woodpecker (wildlife is rare in China!)
You can see all of the photos here. Or view a slide-show.
Logistics:
Stay at the 4 Star Queli Hotel if you want a warm and comfortable room. Stay at the Qufu Youth Hostel if you want a bargain. (And by all means, stop in for coffee if you are not staying there. It is a convenient stop off on the way to the cemetery.) Try the Mingya Confucianist Hotel for something in the middle (that’s where we wanted to stay, but forgot the name.) Try searching elong.net for great prices.
Need to buy train tickets? The business center at the Queli Hotel can arrange this for you for a small service fee. There’s supposedly a ticket shop somewhere in downtown Qufu, but we couldn’t find it.
For travel from Linyi to Qufu: K52 train Rizhao-Beijing leaves Linyi at ~1830 and arrives to Qufu at ~2030. Qufu is the fourth stop. (all liable to change!) 24RMB for standing ticket
For travel from Qufu to Linyi: K8271 train leaves Qufu at ~1930 and arrives to Linyi at ~2130. Linyi is the third stop. (all liable to change!) 14RMB for standing ticket
iphone photo of guy waiting for bathroom and guy spitting on train
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
The city is really very beautiful. It has wide streets and wonderful temples. As you shown in the pics.
If you are able to lay your hands on the production entittled “Wild China” by the British BBC, on DVD, it will worth your while. It has stunning scenaries of China captured with High Definition cameras, containing some of the places you had been to and will be able to relate to, and some locations you never knew existed in China. Some really rare wildlives are included, as the production of 28 BBC camera crew team travelled throughout China. And is narrated with a lot of humor.
Enjoy
ThirdEye
Sounds great! Thanks, ThirdEye, I will be sure to look for it.