A few days ago, Ross and I took the kite we bought in Weifang (the nearby city that's the Kite Capital of the World) for its maiden flight. We're really pleased with the kite we bought -- it's a squid.

For more about the kite culture of Weifang, try this interesting article with good pictures. Rather than quote it, I'll just provide the link. We saw a lot of kites in Weifang, unfortunately though, not many that were actually being flown! But we did go to the kite museum and saw a lot of beautiful kites in a beautiful building, pictured above. Kite-making in the area goes back thousands of years. As they explained at the museum, kites were used for military purposes, including psychological warfare and signalling, in ancient China... 

Turns out, we missed the Kite Festival by one day -- so we saw precious few kites, and no celebrations, in Weifang, the Kite Capital of the World. However, Weifang is worth visiting even when there is no festival afoot, as you'll see. 

You need your passport to buy a train ticket in China. You can line up at the train station (not recommended), or you can act helpless and ask a Chinese friend to buy it for you on the internet and pay them back (easiest) or go to a travel agent and pay a small fee.

Weifang is the next city over on the train route from our city. It's 45 minutes by fast train and an hour-and-a-half by regular train. The regular train fare was only 13.5 yuan apiece, or a little over two bucks, about a third of the fast train fare, so Ross and I decided, why not? We had time to take the city bus to the train station, so that's another four yuan. So we traveled 156 kilometers for $2.50. 

In the regular train coach, passengers sit on padded benches. The seats are upright like church pews and do not recline, but they're comfortable enough. You are seated three abreast on one side of the aisle and two abreast on the other. Passengers sit facing each other like you see in old Wild West movies and there's a little table under the window so you could play card games or set out some snacks. 

Just as on the fast train, you can buy snacks and drinks from girls who push carts up and down the aisles at a rapid clip, and with an air of indifference, that suggests to me that they are not working on commission and would just as soon not be bothered to stop and sell you some shaved fish or potato chips. Thrifty Chinese travelers pack their own snacks. There's free hot water, so you can make tea or instant noodles, too. And there are bathrooms, which was certainly an advantage over the bus I rode to Heze.

We walked from the train station to our hotel, stopping off along the way at a Buddhist gift shop to admire the trinkets. When I saw "we walked," I mean that we thought the hotel was nearby, and when Ross asked a young couple for directions they interrupted whatever they were doing and walked with us, escorted us, right to the hotel door, which took at least twenty minutes of their time. This kind of extra-special kindness happens to us all the time in China.

The hotel was deluxe and for your reference, we paid 230 yuan, or $43 per night, for a hotel filled with marble and chandeliers, and a girl playing piano in the lobby, so this was no Motel 6. The room was nice, too. After unpacking, we wandered back on the streets again. I should mention at this point that Ross and I have always felt very safe wherever we've been in Shandong Province. Ross spotted a wisp of smoke floating in a nearby street and we steered toward it -- yep, outdoor BBQ. So we enjoyed some cold draft beer and meat on skewers. 

The next day we went to the lobby to ask about kite festival activities and it was then that we learned that there was nothing doing. However, we were right across the street from Kite Square. As we walked across the Plaza we became part of the attraction for other tourists, who asked to take our picture. This is a pretty common occurrence for us foreigners in China.  We went a beautiful leisurely walking tour that included People's Park, the river, street markets, and the Kite Museum.

Weifang has lots of these rent-a-bike stations and we saw lots of people using the bikes. We wanted to do so ourselves but couldn't figure out the instructions....

While strolling through the people's park we decided that Weifang was a charming and livable city, with or without a kite festival. The young lady below doesn't look too pleased about me posing in front of the flowers while she was doing the same.

A bride is escorted through the park to a photo shoot.  This flowering bush looks like a quince (?) but I'm not sure. This river flows through the downtown.

Our quest for kites continued on our second day in Weifang.....

Are you a cemetery buff?  Ever since my aunt took me with her on her visits to the small private cemeteries of our pioneer ancestors in Southern Illinois, where I was more concerned about poison ivy than ghosts, I've liked to walk through cemeteries, particularly older ones. In Illinois, we contemplated the little tombstones of children who were born and died before immunization and antibiotics, or the men who buried wife one, two and sometimes three before joining them in the family plot. My own grandparents are gathered into the bosom of their ancestors on a peaceful little bluff not far from where the family farmhouse once stood.

Many people were buried in or under a conical pile of earth, as in the picture above showing graves beside the Xiao Fu river. However, I believe that due to space considerations, most people in China are cremated now. 

Back in Confucius time, three years of mourning were observed upon the passing of a parent, which Confucius justified on the grounds that the child receives the most careful attention from his parents for the first three years of life. During that time, the mourner should not enjoy music, good food or costly clothing. Confucius used his three years of mourning for his mother as a time of serious study and he emerged as a philosopher/teacher. His teachings explored the question of how to lead a good and upright life, the duties of a ruler toward his subjects, and how all men should deal with one another. His Analects strike me as rather prosaic and repetitive but no-one can deny their influence. Having spoken rudely about Confucius' buck teeth and his Analects, I should add that he must have been a man of great personal charm and integrity to inspire so much loyalty and love from his disciples, who kept vigil by his grave for years. 

According to my guidebook, Confucius died in some obscurity, tired and sorrowful after the death of his son and his favorite disciple, but his reputation must have risen rapidly afterwards, because his family gained great influence and prominence, as well as a very large graveyard-forest. His descendants of have been laid to rest for hundreds of years in this cemetery, which was our third stop on our one day tour of Qufu, the hometown of Confucius.

The entire cemetery was carpeted with blue wildflowers at the time of our visit. The trees are chiefly cypress and poplar.
You can see the soft mounds of older, unmarked grave-sites throughout the forest. Some of the more august deceased had larger monuments and mounds. The cemetery is still receiving occupants to this day. 

Sightseers and admirers making the pilgrimage to Confucius' grave-site can walk through the forest or be whisked around the cemetery in a the same kind of open-sided vehicles they use at Universal studios. That's what our group opted for since we'd been walking all day. We drove around and through the spacious woods until we arrived at the entrance to the area containing Confucius' grave.

Confucius' grave is reached by going through several more gates and temples but the grave itself is not elaborate. (The dragon detail on lower right is a carving on the tomb-marker of one of his descendants.) The large-ish earthen mound of Conficius' grave is behind the plain marker on the left. Some visitors bowed before the grave or brought flowers. Others posed for pictures. 

The cemetery-forest reminded me of The Wood Between the World in the C.S. Lewis book, The Magician and his Nephew. It is a place outside of time that is so peaceful you can forget who you are or where you came from. Sometimes the tides of history have swept over the cemetery walls, as with the Cultural Revolution, but we were glad that our travels had brought us here on a warm spring day. This is certainly a place to ponder mortality, though, if not the hereafter.

Epiphanius Wilson, (ain't that a grand name?) editor of a 1900 translation of the Analects of Confucius, noted that "Throughout his whole writings [Confucius never] mentioned the name of God. He declined to discuss the question of immortality. When he was asked about spiritual beings, he remarked, "If we cannot even know men, how can we know spirits?"*

*Confucius; Mencius; Faxian (2012-05-17). Chinese Literature Comprising the Analects of Confucius, the Sayings of Mencius, the Shi-King, the Travels of Fâ-Hien, and the Sorrows of Han (Kindle Locations 75-77).  . Kindle Edition. 

In my last post about Qufu, I wrote about the damage, both physical and spiritual, of the Cultural Revolution and so this guided blog tour of Qufu has not even arrived at the main shrine.  So, step through a few more gates and over a few more thesholds, (men step through with the left leg first, ladies with the right leg first) to arrive finally at the main temple. Smoky incense (which smells just like smoke, not incense) is ascending as a constant stream of people purchase their incense sticks, light them in an iron cauldron, offer them before the shrine, and bow.

The children are praying for success in their studies. Chinese children are under crushing pressure to excel at school. Middle-schoolers must do well in their graduation exams to go to the best senior high school. Their exam scores when they leave high school determine which university they go to, so from the time they are fourteen years old their entire existence is about the upcoming exams. They are competing against hundreds of millions of other kids. And of course with the "one child policy" most families have only one child on which to pin all their aspirations for the future. Parents will leave no stone unturned to help their children, and that includes enrolling them in after-school lessons of all sorts. Of course there are exceptions -- there are indifferent parents here as everywhere -- but this is overwhelmingly the cultural norm in China.

Visitors can purchase these red tags, write a wish or prayer on them, and leave them at the shrine. I didn't participate in the incensing or bowing or red tag purchasing because I don't believe in intercessory prayer, although I do knock on wood every time I catch myself saying, "Ross and I haven't had food poisoning once since we've been here."  Presumably this homage is more efficacious if performed at the shrine itself. But you could always try visiting your nearest Confucius institute if you want to leave no stone unturned in your drive for academic success.

Although Mao wanted Confucius' shrine to be demolished, his statues smashed to rubble and his influence erased, the Chinese government is now using Confucius as its calling card around the world. Thirteen Confucius Institutes operate in Canada alone, with the stated aim of providing information about Chinese language and culture. Several of my colleagues have mentioned that getting selected to go abroad to work at a Confucius Institute is a much-coveted position.

Above right, one of the dragon pillars of the shrine. Our guide told us that one of the heavy standing stone tablets for the temple area was transported to Qufu at wintertime over roads doused with water to create a sheet of ice.  Hunh!! I wonder if that explains Stonehenge. I'd always pictured log rollers or something, but.... ice!  This obvious expedient had never occurred to me, to tell the truth. 

You'll notice umbrellas in the picture above left. Women often use umbrellas as parasols here on a sunny day. 

Ross and I have never been to the cathedrals of Europe, but we imagine that a hushed atmosphere prevails. Here, the mood was festive and bustling and noisy, with lots of cameras clicking and groups posing, including ours. But that's not a judgement, just an observation. Different strokes for different folks. During our visit we spotted only one other foreigner, incidentally. As we descended the main steps, our guide grouped us together for a picture and we noticed that lots of tourists were stopping to take pictures of us, the foreigners, as we posed. In fact we stood there, facing a bank of flashing cell phones, like a couple of very unlikely starlets. 

As I came down the steps, I saw an elderly man gesticulating excitedly -- he really wanted to talk with us. He showed me his passport and proudly pointed to the stamp that said he'd been to Thailand. I believe he wanted to let us know that he, too, was an international traveler. 

Then it was back out of the complex to the nearby Confucius residence, via a gallery of souvenir stalls. The merchants are friendly but not really aggressive. I bought a cloth satchel for 26 yuan; my companion felt I should I haggled the price down lower but my feeling is that I'm lucky enough to have flown across the Pacific, I'm not going to beat down the price with a woman who hasn't had my opportunities in life over what amounts to a handful of Canadian change.

Confucius descendants lived at this spot for hundreds of years until Japanese kicked them out of their home when they invaded and later, the head of the clan decamped to Taiwan when the Communists won the civil war.  The home is a typical traditional dwelling with rooms arranged around a central courtyard, with further courtyards and buildings behind the main courtyard. 

We were lucky to be touring these sites during the time that everything was covered with spring blossoms. This tree is in the courtyard of the residence. 

Following our guide through the different courtyards and alleys, I lost all sense of direction. We ended up in a beautiful serene garden which we were told was reserved for the ladies of the house. It must have been a welcome place to repair to on a hot summer's day.

By then we were more than ready for a lunch break, so we were taken to a nearby restaurant for a quick meal. The final leg of the Qufu tour was, for me, the most moving. To be continued....