Introduction

The ‘Three Confucian Sites’ (san Kong) in Qufu, birthplace of Confucius (551-479 BCE) in East China's Shandong Province, are the centrepiece of the country's tangible Confucian heritage and rank among the best known complexes of ancient Chinese architecture, alongside the Forbidden City and the Chengde Summer Resort. Their past and present glory can only be attributed to the remarkable stature and resilience of Confucius (551-479 BC). For the better part of the past two millennia, Confucianism was China's state religion (guojiao), while Confucius was commonly known in the country as ‘Master Kong’ (Kongzi), ‘Grand Master Kong (Kong Fuzi), ‘Great Sage’ (Zhisheng), ‘First Teacher’ (Xianshi), and ‘Model Teacher for Ten Thousand Ages’ (Wanshi Shibiao). However, the Sage was knocked off his pedestal as iconoclastic intellectuals set about ‘smashing the Confucius shop’ during the New Culture and May Fourth Movements that swept across China in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The Confucian sites suffered unprecedented damage during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) as Red Guards went on their own rampage against Confucius and his ideas.

Yet, in a dramatic twist of events towards the end of the 1980s, the Chinese Party-state not only began to rehabilitate Confucius and Confucianism but also to revive China's largely disremembered Confucian past and to re-create Confucian rituals in Qufu and Confucius Temples across the country. At the same time, the city of Qufu has been reconstructed and expanded to restore it to its former glory and turn it into a ‘Confucian Mecca’, ‘China's Jerusalem’ or the ‘Holy City of the Orient’.