Confucius Temple & Guozijian
ARTIST RESIDENCY CHINA — BEIJING, no. 11
Confucius, first teacher and moralist, lived 551–479 BC without power or status. The temple compound built to venerate him in Beijing and its neighbor the Guozijian, Imperial Academy are a short walk from the Yonghegong, Tibetan Buddhist Lamasery. Begun in 1287, the Confucius Temple functioned officially until the end of feudal rule in 1911. The grueling civil service examination system at the Guozijian, gatekeeper of upward mobility, ended in 1905. Among other treasures, the site houses hundreds of stelae — upright stone slabs — engraved with Confucian classics and with the names of each scholar who passed the exam in the approximately 1300 years it was administered.
Confucius Temple itself
700 year-old cypress
marble drums and bronze bell
Confucian classics engraved and individually housed
engraved names of scholars
Guozijian Imperial reading and lecture hall
circular moat surrounding Imperial lecture hall
Guozijian Imperial lecture and reading room dais
scholar candidates
Confucius in bronze
tokens of luck are sold at the gift shop
Qin Dynasty scholar’s tools, 221—206 BCE, introduced the brush for writing and painting and a single set of language characters
incense burner
standardized weights and measures introduced in Qin Dynasty, 221—206 BCE
glazed tile archway
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