Cemetery of Confucius 孔林

About Cemetery of Confucius

Stone animals, officials and turtle-supported steles mark individual approaches among the trees. The route to Confucius’s tomb passes ceremonial gates and a bridge before reaching the memorial precinct. Its scattered graves and shaded paths offer a quieter, more expansive setting than the temple and mansion inside the old city.

Originally known as Zhisheng Lin (至圣林, 'Cemetery of the Ultimate Sage'), the burial ground was at first only a simple grave without a mound. As Confucius's standing rose over the centuries the cemetery grew, reaching about one qing (顷) in area by the end of the Han dynasty and, after repeated renovation and expansion, its present two square kilometers, with more than 100,000 burials of descendants down to the seventy-sixth generation of the main line and seventy-eighth generation of collateral branches. In the 12th century, when Jin dynasty forces under Wanyan Zonghan captured the region, soldiers who wanted to dig up Confucius's tomb were executed on his order.

The cemetery was listed by the State Council as one of the first batch of Major Historical and Cultural Sites Protected at the National Level (全国重点文物保护单位) on 4 March 1961, and since 1994 it has formed part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site 'Temple and Cemetery of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion in Qufu,' known together with the Temple of Confucius and the Kong Family Mansion as the San Kong (三孔). The cemetery and its monuments were damaged during the Cultural Revolution in 1966; a 2011 survey later recorded several thousand stone inscriptions there, from Song-dynasty stelae to twentieth-century pieces.

What to look for

• Confucius’s tomb and the adjacent family memorial precinct.
• Spirit-way sculptures and carved steles among the wooded burial plots.

Location & getting there

Getting to Cemetery of Confucius

Follow Beiguan Street north from Qufu’s old north gate toward the cemetery’s southern entrance. The approach continues along the tree-lined ceremonial avenue past the Wangu Changchun arch; this is a separate transfer from the temple and mansion area.