Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 52, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 September 1869 — A Visit to the City of Confucius. [ARTICLE]

A Visit to the City of Confucius.

Mr. Markham, an English Consul in China, has written an aoepunt of a visit to Kiu-foo, the city of Confucius, which has been printed with other reports of British Consuls in China and Japan. Mr. Markham says Kiu-foo is a city of no Importance, but tt may be called the historical city of China. There Confucius was educated, lived, taught and was finally buried. His birth-place, a cave, is in the Ne-shan Hills, some twenty li to the northeast. His representative, a Kungyth, or Duke of the Empire, dwells in the city, the whole of the north and west of which is taken up with the grounds of the Ducal Palace and Temple to Confucius, splendidly wooded. The temple is a building on a far more magnificent scale than any Mr. Markham saw in China. Here are numerous relics of the sage, some of the bronze censers, etc., bearing date B. C. 2800. The city has a population of about 25,000, which is composed chiefly of descendants of Confucius, eight out of ten families bearing his surname. The office of Cheshien, or magistrate, is hereditary in the family, as also are the official appointments. When the rebels occupied the surrounding country they spared the city of mandates, declaring that they only wished to destroy the unjust and corrupt rulers, but that Confucius’ descendants could not be so. Except the fact of so many families bearing the sage’s surname, which requires some little explanation, nothing could be more satisfactory Land it would be well for some of the rising generation if, instead of making books on the turf, they were to take a leaf out of the book of Confucius, who, we may be sure, never saw the face of a bailiff in Kiu-foo, and whose bronze censers were never profaned by the auctioneer’s hammer, like some people’s family plate and racing cups in these degenerate days. Tsin-hsien, the city of Mencius, is similarly dedicated to the memory of that sage; he has a fine temple, and his descendants are pensioned by the State.