Qufu

We left Xi'an heading east on a train to Zhengzhou, the only ticket that hours of queuing could get us and only about halfway to where we ultimately wanted to get to - Qufu, birthplace and home of Confucius, the founder of the philosophy of Confucianism, the teachings of which have defined Chinese culture for thousands of years.

As I said, we only had tickets for halfway. The rest we'd have to make up as we went along. Initially all seemed to be going well. The train journey was quiet and comfortable and upon arrival in Zhengzhou at 10pm we crossed the forecourt to the bus station and straight away bought two tickets for an overnight bus at 12am to Jinan, capital of Shandong province, from where we could get to Qufu very easily. Fantastic, we thought. Piece of cake.
Midnight rolls round and we get on our bus. Imagine our shock and horror to find that it is NOT a sleeper bus. It's midnight, we're tired, we have an eight hour journey ahead of us and it is a normal sit-down bus. Nightmare. As soon as we set off we were treated to the same old crappy variety performance that is shown every single time I get on a bus. This was played as per usual at full volume until about 2.30am. From then on it was karaoke for the rest of the night. We tried to curl up on the seats and get a little sleep, but we weren't very successful. If you tried to lie down you'd just fall off the seat at each and every heavy brake application that was made as our driver drove along at full speed through the thick fog.
We eventually pulled into Jinan at 8am feeling very near dead. No time to rest though. We still had to get another 2 hour bus to Qufu. After being dropped somewhere very random and a lot of walking we set about securing tickets for the next portion of our trip. Understandably our recent experiences had made this a very high priority! This done we found ourselves a youth hostel and had a much needed shower. We still only had that one day to look round so sleep was unfortunately not an option. Luckily for us Qufu was a quiet and unhurried little town that left us alone. I liked it for that and for much more besides.
After lunch, and witnessing yet another fight break out in the restaurant between some drunken men (we'd seen a fight almost daily since Beijing, most of them involving the police, but not in the intervening kind of way!), we took a little tour round the Kong family mansion (formerly inhabited by Confucius' descendants until Communism and the Cultural Revolution caused them to flee to Taiwan) and the Confucius Tample. Both were pretty nice, but after seeing so many temples and red and gold traditional architecture they didn't seem so astoundingly special and we zipped through them in about two and a half hours. Maybe I was just too tired. I'm still glad we saw them though.
Our rapid progress meant we even had a little time spare to see the Confucian Forest. This is where every descendant of Confucius throughout the last two and a half thousand years has been buried. The family was very important in China throughout it's history and the heavily wooded burial grounds reflected that. We rented two rusty bikes at the gate and eventually ditched the bike woman who wanted to show us where to go and rode off as fast as we could along the first path we came to. It was something different, and a bit of light relief. We had a wicked time. There were graves everywhere, and some were guarded by big impressive statues. Most were semi-lost to the undergrowth, which lent the place a kind of romantic faded glory, which I rather liked. This last photo is probably a little sacrilegious but it just had to be done. You can't blame me.