242 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



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Photograph by Richard M. Vanderburgh 



WHERE THE ASCENT OE TAI SHAN BEGINS 



Like the Japanese Fujiyama, Tai Shan is the favored 

 shrine of millions. During February and March nearly 

 two thousand people to the mile may be using the paved 

 road that leads to the summit from the city wall of 

 Taian. Some pilgrims are carried to the heights in 

 native chairs, while others, old and bent, but determined 

 to reach the summit through their own exertions, fight 

 heat and hardship and fatigue to reach the prize they 

 seek — a pilgrimage to the sacred mountain where the 

 Emperor Shan worshiped two thousand years before 

 Christ and nearly fifteen hundred years before Con- 

 fucius was born. 



When one has seen one temple 

 in China, one has seen them all, 

 but when one has seen all the 

 temples in China, there is still 

 the temple at Kufu to see. The 

 buildings and arches are much 

 the same as any other similar 

 edifice, and there are doubtless 

 larger temples, but there is a cer- 

 tain air of respectability, a cer- 

 tain atmosphere inherited from 

 the past, that makes a deep im- 

 pression on the observer. 



The approach to the temple is 

 made along a wide avenue at 

 right angles to the axis of the 

 temple grounds, being in fact a 

 section of the main street of the 

 city, treeless and shut in on both 

 sides by high walls. 



Within the gates, one's atten- 

 tion is first called to the small 

 forest of stone tablets, five to ten 

 feet high and three or four feet 

 wide, which line the pathway, 

 commemorative of imperial 

 visits. 



The buildings stand in a park 

 of splendid cypress trees, one of 

 which, said to have been planted 

 by Confucius himself, has its 

 ancient roots carefully inclosed 

 in a marble parapet, and from its 

 twisted stump a tall and vigorous 

 stem, itself some centuries old, 

 projects straight aloft to pro- 

 claim that the old root has sap 

 and life in it even yet. As such 

 it seems to typify or foreshadow 

 a revival of that which is the 

 most vital and worthy in the 

 philosophy and teaching of the 

 Sage. 



HOW THE VENERATION FOR 

 CONEUCIUS GREW 



and. having sent ahead our military guard 

 to secure guides for the temple and 

 cemetery, we lost no time (although we 

 did lose considerable money in gratui- 

 ties ) in seeing the wonders of this proto- 

 type of all Confucian temples throughout 

 the realm. 



This Confucian temple, an 

 enormous and magnificent place, 

 occupying with its grounds the whole of 

 one side of the town, is the model of the 

 Confucian temples found in all the cities 

 of China. It is almost certainly the 

 growth of ages. 



The probabilities seem to be that, 

 though the family revered the tablets of 



