Confucius Mansions Hotel Qufu

So I haven't updated in a while because i just had a test! I'm so happy for it to be over with! So last weekend the whole program went on a trip to the Shangdong province, specifically to two cities, Tai'an and Qufu. We took a sleeper train there, and that was really cool! The beds were in compartments of 6, with three attached to each wall and stacked on top of each other! In Tai'an we got to climb ...

... br>I don’t understand why they are treating us this way!’
‘What’s wrong with these people?’

My answer was that they had all come from Ningxia Province to find work as the only other time I have ever heard her speak the same words (maybe a little harsher) was when we were travelling through Ningxia Province last year on the 2008 Beers N Noodles ...

... that share his status his impact was not felt during his lifetime. He lived in abject poverty and rarely put pen to paper. His teachings though were recorded by dedicated followers in The Analects of Confucius. His descendants, the Kong family lived a much more comfortable life. The original Confucian temple at Qufu began its construction in 478BC and has been enlarged, remodeled, add to ...

... from room to room humming and haring just to **** him off more. It didn’t work at the longer he was awake the happier he became and soon we were sharing a cup of green tea outside the hotel a the cabbies silently slept the early hours away.

After paying for a night I did some hand washing, showered and fell asleep until mid afternoon.

When I woke I felt refreshed and so happy that I didn’ ...

Not long left now so it was time to start heading back towards Beijing, a trip that has taken me through various parts of northern Shandong province, home of a number of sites that are just how you imagine imperial China from the movies. My first stop was Qufu, the hometown of Confucius (Kong Fuzi). The first highlight of arriving here was my first sighting of a real dragon. Well, the dancing lantern type anyway. It was the last night of the Spring Festival ...

... I took some nice pictures in the forest, which looked like something out of Lord of the Rings, with the mist all around on the ground, over the golden brown leaves. I also took some pictures of the tomb of Confucious itself. The next morning, we took a taxi to the first bus station mentioned in the last entry, and took the short-distance bus to the long distance bus, this time with no mishaps. Once there, we asked the people at the gate for the bus, in ...

... the journey here from Beijing; It was by quite a way the best train I've ever been on. If an ipod were a train essentially... Sleek, white, spacious, overflowing with helpfull staff and very very fast. Obviously the trans-mongolian train had a certain charm and soul absent in this train but both have their place. Old vinyl record players and ipods.

Word of the day: qi2guai4 --strange, odd. That is the best word to describe this day, as you will see below. Someone asked me to put the tones in the word of the day, thus the numbers. I wanted to put in the characters, but this site can't deal with them, so I'm working on getting pictures of them or something. It won't let me use the tones that I am used to either, but the numbers work just as well. We woke up on the train ...

... the legs.

Qufu is the hometown of the ultra famous philosopher, Confucius. As such, the old town has been well preserved and had money showered on it. I had to read the Analects in second year uni. While I didn't much like them, there is no denying the man's influence, especially in this part of Asia. People from Korea and Japan often come to Qufu on pilgrimage to pay their respects to the sage.

Mum and I are neither of us big museum or temple people (ok, so that ...

After a two-day pit stop at Suzhou to dump my luggage, I hopped onto another long distance bus and headed for Qufu, Confuscius' birth and deathplace, in Shandong province. Being the only foreigner on the bus, I was stared at, prodded and questioned in heavy accents for the next 12 hours before being dropped off on the side of the highway to (luckily, since my friends had to walk for an hour and a half to find transport) complete the lengthy journey. My taxi-driver told me he'd ...