Beijing 2024 - Confucius Temple (北京孔庙) Stone Tablet Library

 

The Confucius library of the 13 classic was nothing I would have imagined before. I guess this is one of the benefit of not doing your research when you travel, you can get pleasantly surprised by what you see! When I read that it was a collection of classics, I was thinking books, or even if it did says engraving, I thought maybe stones with text. But above is what the library looked like. Seriously! Straight out of Mulan movie! Or even Indiana Jones! Super high stone tablets engraved with text! OMG! Strike gold for me!

A visitor casually taking a scroll among the text. Every one, a classic.

It actually felt like I was walking inside a mausoleum than a library. I guess I was too influenced by Western culture. I've never seen a stone library in the western world before. Maybe i should go visit the pyramids! I bet that would top this! Ha!

This alove was worth my whole day's trip here! 

There were also these little stone houses that when you went closer to them....

Each panel was a text of it's own. Perhaps short stories? Poetry?

I love those with green text over white marble too. I guess these are the more modern stones. The classics were the huge tablets with text so worn out it was hard to read them.

Here is a closed up of what the text of one might looked like. Text in ancient time are written in traditional Chinese, which is more complicated than current modern Chinese. In my opinion, traditional Chinese is much more beautiful, and you can still use them in Taiwan, Japan, and even South East Asia. I hope they will never disappear from this earth.

Cordy is super happy to have the chance to visit such a unique library in her life time!