📍Kong Miao (Temple of Confucius), Qufu, Shandong 273100, China
“I was born Kong Qiu on the 28th of September 551 BC in the state of Lu — now Qufu in Shandong province, China. My father died when I was three and my mother raised me in modest circumstances. I eventually rose to a position in the Lu government but spent most of my adult life travelling between Chinese states seeking a ruler who would implement governance based on virtue and human-heartedness. No ruler fully did. I returned to Lu in my late sixties to teach the disciples who recorded my conversations as the Analects. I died in 479 BC. The Temple of Confucius in Qufu, the cemetery, the family compound maintained for over two thousand years — these are among China's most sacred sites. The teaching outlasted every dynasty.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📷 Location image · via Wikimedia Commons
Sources: Fingarette, H. Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (1972), Harper & Row; Confucius. The Analects (5th century BC, translated D.C. Lau 1979)