December 6, 2009

Today at 8:00 a.m. we went with some other foreign teachers to Qufu. Qufu is the place, where Confucius lived, studied and was buried. It was a very cold day. Besides Lugene and me, Eric and Christine Sorenson, Trent Copeland and the foreign Korean teacher went.

Qufu is a city of about 600,000 people about a two hour drive from Ji’nan. As most people know, Confucius was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese thought and life.

His philosophy emphasized personal and governmental morality, correctness of social relationships, justice and sincerity. He also promoted building a harmonious society. This has been the theme of Hu Jintao, the current president of China. Confucius' thoughts have been developed into a system of philosophy known as Confucianism.

After our visits to the Confucius sites we did some tourist shopping. Lugene bought a fan and I bought a large tiger painting. I thought the painting was very cool! We got back to our apartment about 5:15.