On August 20th, the 2022 Graduate Class of Excellent Traditional Chinese Cultureat Joint Graduate School of Nishan World Center for Confucian Studies conducted research and training activities in Zoucheng. More than 300 graduate students visited Mencius Family Mansion and Temple, immersed in the Confucian culture that has been passed on for millennia.

As the students strolled into Mencius Temple, well-known Mencius sayings and anecdotes presented themselves one after another. Despite the passage of time, Mencius the sage made an indelible mark on Chinese people’s collective mind. “To a state, the people are the most important. The state comes second. The ruler is the least important.”The saying seems to reverberate among the towering ancient pagoda trees of the Mencius Temple through the millennia. Located in the south of Zoucheng City, the Mencius Temple, also known as the Yasheng (sub-sage) Temple, was the place where Mencius was offered sacrifices in the past dynasties. It was rectangular in shape, with five courtyards and 64 halls, covering an area of more than 60 mu (4 hectares). Getting closer to the Mencius Family Mansion, the ancient building cluster with a history of more than 880 years envelops the students with eternal serenity and tranquility.

As the birthplace of Zoucheng-Shandongculture, Zoucheng, a cultural city with a history of three thousand years, has produced a large number of talents, including the mother of Mencius who moved three times for his education andcut off the woven clothto demonstrate the importance of tenacity in study, andMencius,the sub-sageof Confucianism,whose“merit is on a par with Yu(reputed tamer of floods and founder of the Xia dynasty)”. In carrying forward the cultural heritage, the Mencius Temple has linkedbetween the excellent traditional culture and the core value of the new era.The millennia-old Confucian culture has been carried forwardhereand injected with new vitality.

Through visiting the Mencius Family Mansion and Temple, students could examine closely Mencius’s thoughts, learn from the sage who would sacrifice his life for righteousness and the proud characters of uprightness and meticulousness, and explore the meaning and significance of the Chinese Maternal Education Culture.