Youzheng Qufu

... of the five sacred mountains in China, Taishan. It has a total 6000+ steps, but we only climbed 3000! Still it was a workout, but the view from the top was awesome!
Then we went to Qufu, which is only about a 1.5 hour bus ride away. Qufu is Confucious' hometown, so we visited everything Confucious! We saw Confucious temple, then Confucious burial forest, and his mansion (he didn't actually ...

... the city are all associated with Confucius.

All three have been listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 1994.

If you are planning on a visit to Qufu make sure you put aside an entire day to visit the cities three main sites. You can get one ticket that allows entry into not only all three but also the Confucius museum. Luo Wei and I never went to the museum as ...

... as it is it really is such a wonderfully charming town that has been built around the Confucius Temple and Confucius Mansions. It is where the sage Confucius (551 to 479BC) was born and spent his entire lifetime. The inner-walled section of the city can easily be walked in an entire day. That is if you are as silly as me. It actually reminds me a lot of a smaller version of Kaifeng city ...

... in the morning when I departed the train. I know you are all saying, ohhh, isn’t that sweet and yes, it was sweet FOR THE FIRST HOUR but for six hours she sang the same ******n song over and over and over again.

Somehow today I gained around three hours.

I was told by train staff and passengers that we would arrive at Yanzhou City around seven in the morning yet somehow I found myself leaving ...

... along the way there are innumerable Taoist temples (and one Buddhist and one Confucian one for good measure) to stop off at. So, I headed off early, with my rucksack packed up with extra layers of clothing as the Lonely Planet had warned that the summit could get very cold. For about 6600 of the steps I was cursing this decision while sweating my way up. Suddenly though, coming out onto the summit you were struck by massive gusts of biting wind and it was ...

... 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 ...

... that you just wanted to put her in your pocket and take her home. One of our friends from the last leg of the trans-mongolian train we'd bumped into (a ridiculous coincidence really) walk into reception one morning to find her drawing a picture of a bunny rabbit! The only other thing worth mentioning was the 3h express train for the first leg ...

... got off at our stop. The train station is not actually in Qufu, because the locals didn't want the train to disturb Confucius's tomb, so we had to take a taxi to our hostel. Onee we got settled in, we wanted to get tickets to Nanjing, just to be sure that we wouldn't be stranded here when it came time to leave in two days. We talked to the woman at the front desk, who called the trainstation for us, but found out that there ...

... 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 ...

... the main sights 74 times..... Qufu is a lovely little town, very pretty and touristless since we have come at the coldest time of the year. The main sights in Qufu are called 'San Kong' which means 'Three Confuscius' or something similar and includes a temple, a mansion and a forest all of which either celebrate or actually hold Confuscius. On the second day, we made our way to a mountain called Nishan which is supposedly where Confuscius was actually born. Nishan is ...