This Way Please!

This weekend, I walked paths that have been walked by emperors, scholars, and philosophers for hundreds of years. It was a crazy feeling standing in front of ancient Chinese style temples, knowing that at some point in time, an emperor may have stood in that very spot, paying their respects to Confucius. It is a feeling that is simply unattainable in the States. Strangely, what impressed me most was the antiquity of the trees surrounding these temples. Some of these trees are thousands of years old. Thousands of years ago, some simple gardener planted these trees there, unaware that they would withstand the test of time and watch as emperor after emperor walked beneath its branches, lasting past the time of dynasties to see people like us flock to its temples. This, to me, is simply amazing.

Of course, our understanding of the temples, cemetery, and tai mountain were facilitated by the fact that we had not one, not two, but three tour guides accompanying us. Apparently tour guides in China are territorial, and for each new region we visited we acquired a new tour guide. We first picked one up in Tianjin, then Tai an, then in Qufu. In America we most likely would have needed only one tourguide. However the abundance of tour guides meant that each of us had the chance to ask our own questions, and to practice our Chinese, so this tradition certainly was useful.

Of all the places we visited this weekend, I enjoyed Confucius’ cemetery the most. It was vastly different from anything I could’ve expected of a cemetery. When I thought of a cemetery I thought of a solemn place with orderly rows of well-kept graves. I envisioned well trimmed grass and lines of tombstones. Confucius’ cemetery was nothing like this. It is a huge plot of land that is at once free and serene. The cemetery is essentially a forest where both elaborate and simple gravemarkers can be glimpsed from behind trees and among wild grass. Confucius’ grave itself was a giant mound of dirt covered in grasses and plants, with two slabs marking it as his. As the tour guide told us about what was written on the stone, I saw two butterflies flitting across the mound which covered his body. I immediately loved this cemetery because it feels like the bodies of the people who were laid to rest there were given back to the earth, and their energy became a part of nature, which is both unconstrained and beautiful. Their resting places are not kept trimmed and tamed, but left untouched to this result. Adding to the beauty of this cemetery is the fact that Confucius is surrounded not only by nature, but by his family. The cemetery contains more than a hundred thousand of Confucius’ family and descendents. He is buried with his wife, and his son and grandson are buried around him. Between this and the beauty of the cemetery, I cannot imagine a better resting place for the great sage Confucius.