Foreign Guests Marvel That “Your Traditions Have Never Been Interrupted” After Watching the Ceremony to Worship Confucius

On September 28, the public ceremony to worship Confucius of the Bingwu year was held at the Confucius Temple in Qufu, commemorating the 2,577th anniversary of the birth of Confucius, the great thinker, educator and founder of Confucianism in ancient China. Reed Way Dasenbrock, former Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, experienced this ceremony, which has been passed down for over a thousand years, for the first time. "I went to the Confucius Temple and the Confucius Forest, and it was completely different from visiting them on my own as a tourist." Standing in the courtyard amid the rising Eight-row Dance and the resounding drums and music, he said the ceremony, in which several hundred people took part, greatly enriched the experience. "What amazes me most about China is the degree of reverence you show for tradition." He reflected with emotion that China's traditions have never been interrupted, and that this feeling of spanning a thousand years is something not to be found in Western culture, and is truly moving.