Advanced Search

The story appears on

Page A6

September 29, 2015

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » Nation

Harmony in diversity as hundreds celebrate the birth of Confucius

Source: Xinhua | September 29, 2015, Tuesday | Print Edition

BIRTHDAY celebrations for Confucius were a major event in Qufu yesterday, the eastern Chinese city where the philosopher and cultural icon was born about 2,500 years ago.

Hundreds of people gathered at the Temple of Confucius, reciting his teachings and dancing in traditional scholars’ robes in a ceremony said to date back to 478 BC.

However, Kong Xiangling, a 75th-generation descendant of “the Grand Master,” did not break his daily routine for the event.

For Kong, a clergyman living in the municipal seat of Jining about 45 kilometers from Qufu, yesterday was a quiet time of religious learning.

Bearing the family name of Confucius as one of the sage’s two million descendants, he does not feel obliged to follow the Confucian school nor feels it is odd to be a Christian.

“My parents were Christian and so was my grandfather. I don’t know how my grandpa started but I grew up with the religion,” he said.

One of his four siblings as well as his son and daughter-in-law are all practicing Protestants.

One of the earliest graduates of Shandong Theological Seminary, Kong became a minister in the early 1990s.

“This is the heartland of Confucianism but Christianity prospers. The church I serve is an example,” he said.

Baptist missionaries established themselves in Jining in the 1910s and built Huangjiajie Church, where Kong preaches, in 1925. The church can hold 1,500 people.

There are about 130,000 Protestants and 448 registered churches and practicing locations in Jining.

“I am not very familiar with Confucian teachings but I know the basics. I do not find them exclusive,” Kong said. “The essence of Confucianism, such as compassion, love of family and the idea of serving and helping other people, are the same as Christian teachings.”

There are more similarities between indigenous tradition and foreign religion. Both of them were sidelined for ideological reasons during radical eras in the past century but are now being incorporated back into the identity of a modern China.

Zhang Yiwu, a professor at Peking University, said that promoting Chinese tradition should not be considered an aggressive move to fend off other cultures. “Chinese civilization has always upheld the principle of harmony in diversity. I have no reason to believe it will stop now,” he said.

He said China had greatly benefited from knowledge picked up from the West since the 19th century. “The world is diverse. We understand that and that’s why the leadership is committed to opening up,” he said.

Nation


 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend