We had to make our way back to Nanjing after our little trip to Qingdao, but decided against the direct route back, as there is an interesting spot on the way back – Qufu. Qufu is the birthplace of Confucius, and now has the origin home of Confucius, and a Temple of Confucius. Due to it being such a prominent spot in Chinese culture, they don’t have a train station, as Confucius’ predecessors did not want a train station that would mess with the fengshui of Confucius’ birthplace.
Getting in by a bus from Qingdao, we were mobbed by various touts, who wanted to show us this place called the Confucius theme park, which they advertise as some sort of nationally rated 4A feature. We ignored them, and hired a taxi, which brought us to the ancient home and temple of Confucius. We decided to grab a bite before continuing on our sight-seeing. While we were having our lunch, a young chap chatted us up, and started strongly advertising the Confucius theme park. As he seemed nice, we went along with it. Baaaadddd idea!
That place is a complete joke. When we entered, it is obvious it is a complete scam. They have five halls. One of them is some sort of discotheque with a Chinese restaurant, and the guy who brought us there justified that it’s because Confucius liked music, that’s why there’s a discotheque. There is also another hall with fake toy horses and targets with arrows, whereby they charge money for rides and arrows. The guy’s justification was that Confucius encouraged the physical activities. Incredible.
After that fiasco, we decided to make our way back to Nanjing directly. Unfortunately for us, they no longer had seats left on the train. Despite our horrible experience the last time standing on the train for 14 hours, we decided to do this journey standing again. The long train ride from Zoucheng to Nanjing was pretty painful, but 6 hours of standing is really easy peasy compared to 14 hours, and it was no where close to how crowded it was compared to the last train ride.
The miniature land in Confucius Theme Park
Wanderlust 