Confucius Temple

Confucius has always been popular with authorities everywhere  because Confucius says the authorities should be respected and obeyed. Whether they were correct or not didn't enter into his thinking. So now even in mainland China there is a revival of Confucius because the Communist Party is now the "Authority".  This is ironic because the Communist Party came to power promising to throw out the old ways. 


With this sceptical attitude that I went to the Confucian Shrine in Tainan. It's about a city block of park and temples. Even though Confucius dates  from 551-479BC and was Chinese through and through, the Qing Dynasty from Manchuria reconstructed the Confucian Temple in 1665 in Taiwan. (They were the "authority" at that time).

At these temples are displays where students hoping to to well on the National Exams post their wishes. They(or their parents)make some offerings to the spirits to do well. Save your money and time  and study a little more. Here we have a board of requests to the spirit Confucius to help with test results.

There are are some stele from the the 1600's when the Manchurian Qing Dynasty revived the Confucian Tradition of respecting authority.

As you can see, even in stone the characters are hard to read. Here is a close up:

So even the English phrase "written in stone" doesn't mean much when you consider Chinese history. In less than 400 years "written in stone" means "unreadable". These stele are granite not just limestone or shale.