Qufu Favorites

Favorite thing: "This great ethical and philosophical system is named after its founder, Confucius (Master Kong), who lived in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BC, born into a middle class family, although the family was actually in the superior class of the current dynasty."

" Xiào or Hsiao (孝) - filial piety. This was considered among the greatest of virtues, and had to be shown towards both the living and the dead. The term "filial" means "of a son" and therefore denotes the respect and obedience that a son should show to his parents (traditionally, especially to his father). But this relationship was extended by analogy to a series of five relationships: those between father and son, ruler and subject, husband and wife, elder brother and younger brother, and that between friends. Specific duties were prescribed between each of the participants in these sets of relationships. Such duties were also extended to the dead, and this led to the veneration of ancestors, to which the living stood as sons to their fathers. At this point we can see hsiao almost imperceptibly fading into li, for example the precise regulations on the length and manner of mourning on the death of a family member. In time, filial piety was also built into the Chinese legal system: a criminal would be punished more harshly if the culprit had committed the crime against a parent, while fathers exercised enormous power over their children. Much the same was true of the other unequal relationships. Our main source of our knowledge of the importance of filial piety is The Book of Filial Piety, a work which is attributed to Confucius, but was almost certainly written only in the third century B.C. Nevertheless, filial piety has played a central role in Confucian thinking ever since, and continues to do so. "

Fondest memory: This are just some sentences about Confucianism from Wikipedia.com I would not know how to explain this with my own English.

wikipedia.com: Confucianism

Another very ddetailed page is

www.chinakongzi.com