Qufu Day 1: Town of Kong Zi

I woke up early this morning to get on the "slow train" out to Qufu by this afternoon. By "slow train" they mean it only goes 250 km/h (155 mph), so we were still flying pretty fast. I got there early this afternoon, where I found that there are no more train tickets to Qingdao, so I will be spending 6 hours on a bus tomorrow instead - a small sacrifice to get to the pinnacle of Asian beer festivals. After finding an honest taximan, I got to my hostel (the charming Qufu International Youth Hostel), dropped off my junk and set out to find food and stuff to do.



Naturally, despite having a map, I wandered in the completely wrong direction from any food or popular sites, but found myself at the Kong Zi High School. Kong Zi is what everyone in China calls Confucius, and would have been much easier for younger me to learn in primary school. To this day, I put my spell check to work putting in an extra "o" or "s" every time I write Confucius. Kong Zi would have been far easier for me to remember; I can remember King Kong, so I could probably also remember the great Chinese scholar Kong Zi (although I probably would have switched them a couple times). Plus, Confucius contains a syllable that Chinese people don't have in their language, which just seems odd to me. I'm calling him Kong Zi from here on out, end of argument. If you don't like it, you can get out (just kidding, please stay). Anyways, I went to his school, here are some photos:

The Master himself, in all his glory

His playground of enlightenment

The ping pong gallery, where he taught his disciples how to lose gracefully

The track/basketball court/soccer field, where he first said "Do or Do Not, There is No Try"

After that and a chicken wrap-esque thing (more Chinese than just a chicken wrap), I calibrated myself and decided to head to some of the popular sites. There are three in Qufu: Kong Zi's school, his mansion, and his mausoleum. I got to the school at 5:00, but it was closing at 5:30, so I whipped over to the mansion which closed at 6:00. Unfortunately, it takes more than 45 minutes or an hour to see, so I didn't go in, but on the flip-side, I met my tour guide for tomorrow.

As I was looking for the ticket office, a tiny Chinese girl came up to me and started asking me usual questions: What country are you from? What school did you go to? Why, the who, what, when, the where, and the how. And before I knew it she was offering to show me around in exchange for some English practice since she was majoring in teaching Chinese to foreigners at the local university. Sounds like a good deal to me. But there was a catch...

Oops, I think I did it again. Hopefully this won't be a running theme in the blog, but it has been so far in my time in China: wherever I go, Chinese girls want to take care of me. I thought she was just being nice and we were making a fair trade, tour for language. But then we stopped speaking English, only speaking in Mandarin (after a month in America, my brain really needs to be broken back in, today was exhausting). Then we go out for dinner - nothing romantic, honest - and on the way there she makes sure to stop by at a particular vendor to buy me snacks for my bus trip tomorrow. And she starts asking how long I'll stay in China or if I'll return to Qufu after Qingdao and wondering if she should go to Shanghai for grad school next year (我的天啊 wo de tian a “oh my skies!"). Finally, she says that her school can lend us bicycles; after consenting, she says it's actually just one bicycle and it isn't a tandem, I'll ride it with her sitting sidesaddle on the back. I swear I don't do it intentionally...

Oh well, should be interesting - as per usual.

Stephen "Scuba" Lauer