Nanjing Confucius Temple - Qinhuai River Scenic Area 南京夫子庙-秦淮河风光带

Welcome, everyone, to the Nanjing Confucius Temple Qinhuai Scenic Belt. Today I'll be taking you along the route from the Ancient Qinhuai Archway through the Spirit Wall and Pan Pond, the Tianxia Wenshu Archway, Lingxing Gate, Dacheng Hall, Mingde Hall, the Jiangnan Examination Hall, Mingyuan Tower, Wende Bridge, Wuyi Lane, and finally the Qinhuai painted boat pier — tracing the full sweep of this place where Confucian temple, imperial academy, and examination hall all come together in one of China's great centers of learning.

A quick introduction to what the Confucius Temple actually is — many visitors assume it's just a single temple, but it's actually a vast complex covering 26,300 square meters. Founded in the third year of the Xiankang era of the Eastern Jin dynasty in 337 AD, it has stood for nearly 1,700 years, making it China's earliest national institution of higher learning and one of the Four Great Confucian Temples alongside the Confucius Temple in Beijing, the temple in Qufu, and the Jilin Confucian Temple. The complex has three main parts: the Confucian Temple at the center, dedicated to the worship of Confucius; the Imperial Academy behind it, which was the official school; and the Jiangnan Examination Hall to the east, the largest imperial examination venue in ancient China. You could say that every stage of a scholar's life in the old days — from early study to passing the final exams — is represented along this central axis. The Confucius Temple Qinhuai Scenic Belt is free to enter, but Dacheng Hall, the Imperial Examination Museum, and other major exhibition spaces require separate admission tickets.

The archway you're looking at now is the Ancient Qinhuai Archway, the most recognizable gateway into the Confucius Temple area. The front bears the inscription "Ancient Qinhuai" and the back reads "The Sound of Oars and the Glow of Lanterns" — a phrase with a famous story behind it. In 1923, the writers Zhu Ziqing and Yu Pingbo took a boat trip along the Qinhuai River together and each wrote an essay with the same title: "In the Sound of Oars and the Glow of Lanterns on the Qinhuai River." The coincidence became a celebrated moment in modern Chinese literary history. Standing here, you can frame both the archway and the Qinhuai River behind it in a single shot — this is one of the classic photo spots at the Confucius Temple.

Follow the crowd forward, and the wide expanse of water opening up in front of you is the temple's Pan Pond. Take a close look — this is no artificially dug pool. It is the Qinhuai River itself. There is no other Confucian temple in China that can say the same. Why? Because under the Zhou dynasty ritual system, only an imperial school could be fully encircled by water (called Biyong), while schools run by the lords could only be half-encircled (called Pangong). Confucian temples across China typically dug a small semicircular pool in front of the Lingxing Gate to fulfill this requirement. But the Nanjing Confucius Temple took a far bolder approach — it claimed the entire Qinhuai River as its Pan Pond, substituting a natural waterway for an artificial one. This is the only example of its kind among surviving Confucian temples in China.

Now look across the river at that long red wall running the full length of the south bank — that is the temple's Spirit Wall, built in the third year of the Wanli era of the Ming dynasty in 1575. It stretches 110 meters and stands 10 meters tall, making it the longest spirit wall still standing in China. At its center is a raised relief carving of two dragons playing with a pearl on a red background. In traditional feng shui, a spirit wall's role is to gather and contain the energy carried by the wind and water, holding the Qinhuai River's flowing vitality in front of the temple. But it had a very practical function as well — before electric lighting existed, this wall acted like a giant reflector, bouncing the lantern glow from the opposite bank across the water to create the dreamlike effect that inspired the phrase "in the sound of oars and the glow of lanterns on the Qinhuai River."

Photo tip: standing at the stone balustrade on the north bank of the Pan Pond and shooting with the Spirit Wall and the Qinhuai River as your backdrop makes for a particularly striking image, especially in the early evening when the lights come on and the Spirit Wall's deep vermillion glows under the lamps. The stone balustrade you're standing beside is also worth a moment's attention — it was built in the ninth year of the Zhengde era of the Ming dynasty in 1514, making it the oldest surviving Ming-dynasty original structure at the Confucius Temple.

Cross to the north bank and you'll find yourself face to face with this imposing three-bay, four-column stone archway. Look up — the tablet reads "Tianxia Wenshu," four characters meaning "the pivot of all learning and virtue under heaven." It's a title that Nanjing has earned: the city has been one of China's cultural centers since the Six Dynasties period, and during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Jiangnan Examination Hall held its provincial examinations here every three years, drawing candidates from all of Jiangsu and Anhui provinces. More than half of all the top scholars and high-ranking graduates in the country during that era passed through this place. Calling Nanjing "the pivot of learning and virtue under heaven" is no exaggeration.

The hexagonal double-eaved pavilion to the west of the archway is Juxing Pavilion. Its name means "the gathering of stars and the convergence of talent." During the Ming and Qing dynasties, scholars on their way to sit the examinations at the Jiangnan Examination Hall would often stop here to rest and talk, swapping ideas and debating passages from the classics — something like an ancient salon for intellectuals. Together, the archway and the pavilion form the most distinctive skyline of the temple square. Whether you're here in daylight, when the grey bricks and old roof tiles carry a quiet, classical dignity, or at night, when the lights trace their outlines against the dark, both are well worth photographing.

We're now stepping through the first gateway on the central axis of the Confucius Temple — Lingxing Gate. Take a look: this is a stone paifang with six columns and three gateways in the soaring pillar style, the columns reaching straight up toward the sky and topped with decorative stone balls carved with cloud patterns. The structure is pure stone, yet the craftsmen found a way to bring it to life — the spaces between the lintels are filled with beautifully carved peony relief panels, adding warmth to what might otherwise feel like a severe ceremonial monument.

Notice the three characters carved on the tablet above the central gateway: "Lingxing Men" — Lingxing Gate. So what exactly is the Lingxing? Lingxing is an ancient name for the celestial field star. Legend held that this star governed the harvest of grains, and emperors were required to make offerings to it before they could conduct the rites of Heaven. By placing a Lingxing Gate at the entrance to the Confucian Temple, the builders were making a powerful statement: worshipping Confucius is equivalent to worshipping Heaven itself. "To honor Confucius is to honor Heaven" — this was the highest tribute a civilization could pay to its greatest teacher.

Now look at the two side gateways, each inscribed with a pair of names: Zeng Shen and Yan Hui on one side; Zisi and Mengke on the other. These four men represent the core lineage of Confucian thought. Yan Hui and Zeng Shen were Confucius's most devoted students; Zisi was Confucius's grandson; and Mengke — better known as Mencius — inherited Zisi's teaching and gave Confucian philosophy the systematic form it has held for two thousand years. In a sense, the five figures connected to this gate account for the entire intellectual backbone of China's Confucian tradition.

As you pass through, notice one small detail: if you look carefully at the central tablet, you may find only the first two characters of the gate's name inscribed there rather than all three. In traditional ritual architecture, certain characters could be conventionally omitted — the gateway's very presence spoke the rest of the name without needing to say it.

Through Lingxing Gate, we arrive at the second gateway of the Confucius Temple — Dacheng Gate. Dacheng Gate is also called the Halberd Gate. In the old days, the central doors were opened only during major ceremonial occasions; on ordinary days, everyone passed through the side doors. This reflects the same hierarchical logic found throughout Ming and Qing palace architecture — every gate along the central axis carries a coded meaning about rank and proper conduct.

The gate takes its name from a phrase in the Mencius: "Confucius may be said to have collected all that was good." To "collect all that was good" meant that Confucius had absorbed and synthesized the wisdom of all the ancient sages before him, bringing it to its highest possible expression. Look at the stone drums flanking either side of Dacheng Gate — a pair on each side. These are a standard feature of Confucian temple architecture. The stone drums symbolize respect for the worthy and the spirit of ritual and music, reminding every visitor who crosses the threshold to approach the sacred space with a measure of reverence.

Once you've crossed through Dacheng Gate, the stone-paved walkway leads directly to Dacheng Hall ahead. Notice the carved stone panel set into the middle of the walkway — this is the danbi stone, also called the imperial path stone. The carving shows five dragons chasing a pearl through a sea of clouds. In the old days, only the emperor was permitted to walk directly over it; everyone else had to proceed along the sides. We'll follow that same tradition and make our way around it as we enter the main courtyard.

We've arrived at the heart of the Confucius Temple — Dacheng Hall. The hall stands 16.22 meters tall, spans nearly 30 meters across its facade, and is crowned with a double-eaved hip-and-gable roof covered in yellow glazed tiles. In the imperial era, yellow was a color reserved for the royal house — its use here on a Confucian temple was a deliberate expression of the same principle: honoring Confucius as one honors Heaven.

At the center of the terrace in front of the hall stands a bronze statue of Confucius 4.18 meters tall — the largest such statue in any Confucian temple in China. Confucius is depicted in wide-sleeved formal robes, his hands pressed together in front of his chest. Look closely at his hands: they are joined in what is known as the "clasped hands salute" — a gesture that in Chinese culture carries a double meaning, at once the natural pose of a teacher mid-explanation and a sign of deep respect, with hands raised toward Heaven to show that what he was transmitting came from a higher source. Lining the walkway on both sides are twelve white marble statues of his most outstanding disciples, among them Yan Hui, Zilu, and Zigong.

Step inside and look up — that is the largest portrait of Confucius in China, 6.5 meters tall and 3.15 meters wide. The figure wears a scholar's headband and gazes outward with an expression of composed authority. But the true treasures of Dacheng Hall are the 38 polychrome stone relief panels running along all four walls — the Shengji Tu, or Illustrations of the Sage's Deeds. These are no ordinary wall decorations. They were created by more than 200 craftsmen from Yueqing in Zhejiang province, using jade, jadeite, agate, chicken-blood stone, gold, and other precious materials over the course of several years. The 38 panels contain 408 carved figures in total, and together they tell the complete story of Confucius's life: his travels among the feudal states, his teaching under the apricot tree, his compilation of the Six Classics, the hardships he endured at Chen and Cai — each panel a self-contained story. This cycle has been called "the only narrative artwork depicting the life of Confucius in any Confucian temple in the world, unsurpassed in value and craftsmanship."

The hall also houses ancient ceremonial instruments including bronze bells and stone chimes, and ritual music performances are held here at certain times. The music used in Confucian memorial ceremonies is known as yayue — court music with roots in Zhou dynasty ritual — solemn and stately in character. If you happen to be here during a performance, it's worth pausing to listen for a few moments.

Photography note: the interior is dimly lit, so please keep your flash off — the intense light from a flash can cause irreversible damage to these precious inlaid stone panels. To photograph the Shengji Tu in detail, stand about a meter in front of the panel and use the hall's natural ambient light from the side.

Through the back doors of Dacheng Hall, we enter the second major zone of the complex — the Imperial Academy. If Dacheng Hall is where you came to pay homage to Confucius, this is where you came to actually study his teachings. Look up at the tablet above this gateway: "The Foremost Academy of the Southeast," written by Qin Dashi, a top imperial examination graduate of the Qianlong reign of the Qing dynasty. Those five characters sum up the standing of the Nanjing Confucius Temple's academy in the broader landscape of learning across southeastern China.

The main building of the academy is Mingde Hall. And here lies a detail unique in all of China: Confucian academies throughout the country conventionally named their principal hall "Minglun Hall" — the Hall of Illuminated Human Relationships. But the hall here at the Nanjing Confucius Temple was given the name "Mingde Hall" when Wen Tianxiang rewritten its tablet during the Southern Song dynasty. One explanation for the change is that Nanjing at the time was serving as the Southern Song's secondary capital, a politically sensitive position — and the character "lun" in "Minglun" may have carried certain unwelcome connotations in that charged atmosphere, prompting the switch to "Mingde," meaning "illuminating virtue." Whatever the reason, this apparent accident of history gave the Nanjing Confucius Temple a distinction found nowhere else in the country: it is the only Confucian academy in all of China whose principal hall is not called Minglun Hall.

Behind the hall stands Zunjing Pavilion, originally a two-story building where the upper floor stored the Confucian classics and the lower floor was used by the academy head for lectures. Today it has been converted into the Confucius Temple Folk Arts Gallery, bringing together the most representative forms of Nanjing's intangible cultural heritage: Yunjin brocade weaving, Qinhuai lantern craft, Jinling paper-cutting, ivory miniature carving — with live craftspeople demonstrating their skills on site. If you have any interest in Chinese folk crafts, this space is worth setting aside fifteen to twenty minutes to explore.

Heading east from the academy, we've arrived at the place that mattered most to every scholar in imperial China — the Jiangnan Examination Hall. Founded in the fourth year of the Qiandao era of the Southern Song dynasty in 1168, it started out as a modest local examination venue. By its peak during the Ming and Qing dynasties, it contained 20,644 individual examination cells, with hundreds of supporting structures, covering an area of more than 300,000 square meters — able to accommodate over twenty thousand candidates all sitting the examination at the same time for nine days and six nights. To put that in perspective: this was the largest imperial examination venue in ancient China, and the largest of its kind anywhere in the world. Nothing else came close.

Look at the inscriptions on the archway: "Bright Learning Selects Officials" on the left, "Seeking the Worthy for the Nation" on the right — both calligraphed by the Qing statesman Zeng Guofan. Those eight characters capture the core ideal of the examination system: to find the most learned people in the country through fair testing and bring them into government service. In the old days, "a farmer's son in the morning, standing in the emperor's court by evening" was not a figure of speech — study hard enough, and a boy from the humblest background could become a cabinet minister.

From the viewing terrace along the south hall's riverside walkway, you look out across the Qinhuai River to the traditional residential quarters on the opposite bank — white walls, grey roof tiles, red lanterns, all reflected in the water at night, a perfect composition for photographs. Inside, the hall displays artifacts related to the old examination system: candidates' answer sheets, reconstructed examination cells, a top-scholar's drum, a statue of Kuixing — the star deity of literary fortune — in the act of marking the winning name. The most entertaining exhibit by far is the cheating case display — some candidates managed to copy out the entire Four Books and Five Classics onto a piece of silk no larger than your palm, the characters impossibly small yet perfectly formed, a sight that somehow inspires equal parts laughter and awe. There is also a wax figure scene recreating the moment a Jiangnan provincial examination list was posted: the joy of those whose names appeared and the devastation of those who didn't, all frozen in the same instant — the full spectrum of what the examination system meant to a human life.

Cross Gong Yuan Street and directly opposite is the main building of the China Imperial Examination Museum. The design is striking: the entire structure is sunk four stories underground, and on the surface there is nothing but a shallow reflecting pool, its still water mirroring Mingyuan Tower directly in front of it. The concept carries quiet depth — like a mirror of history, it invites the modern visitor to look into the reflections of the examination system's artifacts and see clearly how a single institution shaped the spirit and self-understanding of China across thirteen hundred years.

Follow the entrance ramp as it descends slowly downward, and pay attention to the distance you're covering — this ramp is exactly 130 meters long. Each meter represents ten years in the life of the examination system. Walk the full length and you have traveled from the system's founding under the Sui dynasty to its abolition at the end of the Qing. The walls on either side of the ramp are faced with panels designed to resemble ancient bamboo slips, carved with passages from the Four Books and Five Classics — the texts that every candidate had to memorize in their entirety.

Inside, the visit begins at the lowest level, starting from a gateway inscribed "The Family of the Highest-Ranked Graduates." This gateway is the museum's most prized possession — it belonged to Wu Bozong, the first top examination graduate of the Ming dynasty. Look up from here and the full height of the central atrium opens above you: a domed ceiling dense with points of light, like a sky full of stars. This is the Kuixing Hall, dedicated to the deity of literary fortune who, according to legend, wields a vermilion brush that decides which candidate's name gets marked for glory. Lining the walls on every level are shelves of traditional thread-bound books, evoking the vastness of China's classical scholarship.

Among the most valuable objects in the museum is the palace examination paper of Zhao Wenjie, a top graduate of the Qing dynasty: 260 centimeters long, 1,942 characters, not a single crossing-out or careless stroke anywhere on the scroll. It is the most direct possible illustration of the old principle that "handwriting reveals character." Another essential stop is the great golden examination list from the twentieth year of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty — scan the names and you'll find one you recognize: the top graduate that year was Zhang Jian, one of the most important industrialists and educators of modern China.

Coming back up to ground level, you're standing directly in front of Mingyuan Tower. This three-story timber building was constructed in the thirteenth year of the Jiajing era of the Ming dynasty in 1534, making it the oldest surviving examination compound structure in China. Its name comes from a line in the Daxue — the Great Learning: "to tend carefully to what has passed and to look clearly toward what is distant, bringing virtue to fullness and deepening one's integrity." During the examinations, the supervisors stationed themselves in Mingyuan Tower, surveying the entire examination ground from above. Down at ground level, the reconstructed examination cells are particularly worth experiencing in person — each cell measures roughly 1.3 square meters, three brick walls, a desk and a stool, and nothing else. Candidates ate, slept, and wrote here for nine days and six nights, through summer heat and winter cold. Step inside and sit down for a moment. It gives the phrase "topping the imperial examination list" an entirely different weight.

Practical note: some of the examination cells in the Mingyuan Tower area can be entered and experienced, but flash photography is prohibited throughout the museum, and certain exhibition zones do not permit photography at all. Please watch for the posted signs.

Walk west along the Pan Pond and you'll come to this bridge spanning the Qinhuai River — Wende Bridge. The name carries the meaning "learning and virtue paramount under heaven." And the bridge has more stories than its name alone can hold.

First, Wende Bridge sits precisely on the earth's meridian. Every year, on the fifteenth night of the eleventh lunar month at the stroke of midnight, when the full moon hangs directly overhead, its reflection in the river is split exactly in half by the bridge, one piece falling to the east, one to the west. This spectacle is known as "the Wende Moon-Splitting," and it ranks alongside the Five Pavilion Moon at Slender West Lake in Yangzhou and the Three Pools Mirroring the Moon at West Lake in Hangzhou as the three great moonviewing wonders of the Jiangnan region. This astronomical event only happens once a year, so we won't be seeing it today — but the legend alone makes it worth standing on the bridge and savoring the small wonder of being balanced on the earth's central line.

Second, there is a romantic story attached to this place: legend says that the Tang dynasty poet Li Bai, drunk one night on this very bridge, leaned over the railing to scoop up the moon's reflection from the water and tumbled in. In memory of this literary misadventure, later generations built a small Moon-Catching Terrace at the bridgeside. Standing on Wende Bridge, you have two worlds in view at once — on one side, the solemn gravitas of the Jiangnan Examination Hall, where ancient scholars came to stake their entire futures on a few days of writing; on the other, the lantern-lit pleasure quarters that have lined the Qinhuai since the Six Dynasties, where those same scholars came to drink and write poetry. From the Ming dynasty onward, a Nanjing saying circulated: "A gentleman does not cross Wende Bridge" — pointing to that invisible moral boundary running straight down the middle of the river.

Photography tip: Wende Bridge is the classic vantage point for shooting the Qinhuai River at night and for capturing the painted boats as they pass beneath. In the early evening, as the sun dips and the red lanterns along both banks begin to light up one by one, and a painted boat glides under the arch below you, the scene has a quality that seems lifted straight from an old poem.

Down from Wende Bridge, walk west along the south bank of the Qinhuai River for a few steps and you'll see a narrow lane paved with bluestone slabs branching off to your right — this is Wuyi Lane. The name is one of the most recognizable in all of Chinese literary history. You may already know the poem that made it famous — let's say it together: "By Zhuque Bridge, wildflowers bloom untended; / At the mouth of Wuyi Lane, evening sun slants low. / The swallows that once graced the halls of Wang and Xie / now flit into the homes of common folk below." That was Liu Yuxi, writing in the Tang dynasty.

Why is it called Wuyi Lane? During the Three Kingdoms period, this was the garrison of the Wu army guarding Stone City. The soldiers wore black uniforms — wu yi, black robes — and the name stuck. By the Eastern Jin dynasty, the lane had undergone a remarkable transformation in status: the statesman Wang Dao and the general and statesman Xie An settled here as neighbors, and the two clans they headed became the most powerful families of their age. From the Wang family came the calligrapher Wang Xizhi and his son Wang Xianzhi; from the Xie family came the founders of Chinese landscape poetry, Xie Lingyun and Xie Tiao. It is no exaggeration to say that the aesthetic sensibility and the spirit of the cultured elite during the Eastern Jin dynasty was, to a very large degree, shaped by these two households living side by side in this lane.

Inside the lane, the Wang Dao and Xie An Memorial Hall displays artifacts from the Six Dynasties period and traces the history of both families. One couplet inscribed inside reads particularly well: "Dragons and phoenixes walked these lanes of Wuyi; / by Zhuque Bridge one watches the wheel of the moon." Among the objects most worth seeing are a celadon vessel from the Eastern Jin period and a reproduction of Wang Xizhi's Lanting Xu — the Orchid Pavilion Preface. It is not the original, but even from a faithful copy, that famous brushwork — described by Tang critics as "floating like drifting clouds, vigorous as a startled dragon" — conveys something of the man who made it.

Why has Liu Yuxi's poem endured for more than a thousand years? Because it carries a truth anyone can feel: no family's glory lasts forever, no dynasty outlives time. The swallows that darted through the grand halls of Wang and Xie drifted, over the centuries, into the eaves of ordinary houses — that particular quality of historical melancholy, that sense of time as an unstoppable current, is something uniquely at home in Chinese poetry. Standing at the entrance of the lane today, looking down the narrow stone-paved path between weathered grey walls, it is hard to believe that this was once the political and cultural center of an entire dynasty.

Deep in the lane there is a well called the Wuyi Well, said to survive from the Eastern Jin period itself. Look at the stone rim — it is grooved with deep channels worn by centuries of rope. Those marks are the accumulated weight of a thousand years of daily life.

And with that, our tour of the Confucius Temple draws to a close. If you want to carry today with you in three sentences:

First, this is a one-of-a-kind complex of cultural and educational architecture. The only Confucian temple in China whose Pan Pond is a natural waterway. The longest spirit wall in the country. The largest portrait of Confucius and the largest bronze statue of Confucius in the country. The only Confucian academy in China whose principal hall is not called Minglun Hall. And at the eastern end, the Jiangnan Examination Hall — the largest ancient examination venue in China and in the world. This concentration of superlatives says something real about the Confucius Temple's singular weight in China's cultural landscape.

Second, this place holds the shared memory of six hundred thousand Chinese scholars. From the moment Wang Dao established the Imperial Academy here during the Eastern Jin dynasty to the abolition of the examination system in 1905, over sixteen hundred years of scholars walked this central axis through the full arc of a learned life, from first study to the hope of final recognition. The examination cells beneath Mingyuan Tower, the stone steps in front of Dacheng Hall, the conversations once held in Juxing Pavilion — these spaces hold not one person's story but the story of how an entire civilization chose to find and train its best minds.

Third, the Confucius Temple is more than a temple — it is the living memory of Nanjing itself. By day it is a cultural landmark layered with history; by night it is the warmth and noise of the Qinhuai in full life. You can stand on Wende Bridge and watch the painted boats pass below. You can walk into Wuyi Lane and feel the weight of "the swallows that once graced the halls of Wang and Xie." Or you can simply sit by the edge of the Pan Pond and watch the two-dragon relief of the Spirit Wall shimmer in the waters of a river that has been flowing here for a thousand years.

Thank you for listening, and we hope the rest of your time in Nanjing is wonderful.