Temple of Confucius Restored in Hangzhou

September 28th, 2008 was the 2,559th birthday anniversary of Confucius. At 3 o’clock on the afternoon this day, a commemorative ceremony was held in Hangzhou at the newly restored Temple of Confucius.

Hundreds of representatives of the city residents from all walks of life attended the ceremony. Twenty soldiers in ancient military costumes held the banners of Confucius whereas 30 disciples recited quotations from The Analects of Confucius. Representatives bowed to the statue of Confucius. A special messenger ceremoniously mixed soil and water taken especially from the hometown of Confucius in Shandong with the soil of Hangzhou and the water of the West Lake and poured the mixture at the roots of two trees, signifying the harmonious blending of the Confucius culture and Hangzhou.

The temple of Confucius was a phenomenon across China since very ancient times. The first temple was built in commemoration of the great thinker, educator and the Confucius school. In the Tang Dynasty, the temples of Confucius began to double as schools where students studied classics under the gaze of their cultural ancestor. Gradually, almost every county seat across the country had a temple of Confucius that doubled as a school. Today, China has about 30 temples of Confucius left from history. In addition to the temple in Qufu, Confucius’s hometown in Shandong Province, the most famous temples of Confucius today include the temples in Beijing, Quzhou, Nanjing and Suzhou.

Although the temple in Hangzhou is neither the grandest nor the most famous, it offers some unique features. The image of Confucius seen in most Confucius temples across the country shows a toothy smile with two protruded teeth. This is one of the two most popular ancient images of the great scholar. The ancients believed this image was better because buck-toothed Confucius looked like a deity. Experts in Hangzhou chose the image first created by Wu Daozi, a great painter of human figures in the Tang Dynasty (618-907). So the 4.8-meter statue in Hangzhou presents a Confucius smiling without showing his teeth. The great scholar looks kind and graceful.

Another unique feature of the temple in Hangzhou is that the nearly 1,000-year-old Hall of Great Accomplishment is situated on its original site. Almost all the other existing Halls of Great Accomplishment across the country are restorations at new sites.

The temple in Hangzhou was first built during the reign (1023-1063) of Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty. It moved to the present site in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty. After it doubled as the imperial academy, the student population grew from 200 to several thousands. It served as the state school from the Southern Song Dynasty until the imperial examination system was abolished in the late Qing Dynasty. The temple previously sat in a very large compound. One can imagine how large it is if one knows that the place where Sofitel Hotel and China Academy of Art are located today used to be part of the temple compound. The compound shrank rapidly after the imperial examination close down, but the Hall of the Great Accomplishment remained. In the 1970s, it became the forest of steles, a venue where various old stone steles and monuments as well as rubbings of precious inscriptions in the ancient Hangzhou were put there for preservation and exhibition.

During the restoration project, colored paintings in hundreds of square meters were found on supportive beams in the hall. Experts from the National Palace Museum commented that it is almost miraculous that the colored patterns painted in the early years of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) survived the moist climate in this part of the country.

The forest of steles is still there, an independent part within the compound of the temple. A long circular corridor now displays 450 steles on which you can read inscriptions concerning the imperial academy, emperors’ handwritings, history, science and technology, education, law, painting, regions, and tomb epitaphs. In the astrology room is a stone-carved star chart found on the ceiling of the tomb chamber of a king of the ancient Wuyue Kingdom which covered Zhejiang from 907-978. In the stone scripture room are 85 stones on which are carved scriptures handwritten by an emperor and his queen in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). The scripture stones served as a standard textbook at the imperial academy. The two antiques are the most valuable treasure of the temple.

The newly restored temple is now a big attraction to residents of Hangzhou, a city endowed with a tradition of education. During the golden week in October, 2008, 58,300 people visited the temple. Young scholars in the city came with their parents to seek the blessing of China’s greatest scholar. In the eastern wing-room of the Hall of the Great Accomplishment is a list of 1,036 cosmopolitan graduates of Hangzhou origin in ancient centuries.