Confucious Temple

In our minds, there is a significant difference between the theology of Buddhism and the philosophy of Confucianism, although we don't pretend to know very much about either. When we visited a Confucius temple, there were a striking number of external similarities to what we saw at the Buddhist temple. The temple architecture stressed different things (more dragons than people), but the layout was pretty much the same. Instead of a giant golden Buddha inside the temple, there was a giant golden Confucius. We were surprised to see so much incense burning and ritualistic chanting/singing...something else we saw at the Buddhist temple. Interesting...we weren't expecting to see so many quasi-religious aspects of Eastern religions here.

Part of the admission price (5 yuan...70 cents) was a bundle of incense to burn. So we did. A first for us.

The low-quality video below is sideways...sorry...you'll have to turn your head, but more important than the picture is the sound.