Confucius Complex 南京夫子廟

Unfortunately, I got sick right before my planned trip to Nanjing, which meant I wasn’t particularly excited beforehand.  I took a whole bunch of antibiotics in the few days leading up to the trip and by early Monday morning, I was revving to go.  And boy, was it an early morning.  It started off with arriving at the airport before 7:00am for check in. 

There was some pretty nice scenery when I looked out the window of our Shanghai Airlines plane.

Nanjing is the former capital of China which means Nanjing holds a prominent place in terms of Chinese history and culture. This was immediately evident when we came across the Jiangnan Examination Office (江南貢院).  Located within the Confucius Temple complex, the Jiangnan Examination Office is the place that ancient Chinese scholars gathered every year to take their scholar exams. Even the 4 most notable scholars of the Ming dynasty once wrote their exams here!

This chart explains how many scholars came from each province.  Jiangsu and Zhejiang (the two neighbouring provinces) show an overwhelming number of scholars.  

We discovered that the Confucius Temple complex is actually more of a big shopping complex opposed to a historical site.  In fact, we didn’t even end up seeing the temple, but were able to find a few other ancient buildings after looking around for a bit. We also walked around the front courtyard area for a while, as it was quite pretty with all the trees and waterfront promenade. One of the most beautiful areas was definitely the area surrounding the Qin Hai River.

The area surrounding the water wasn’t actually very big, so many people were crowding around to enjoy the scenery.

To prove the popularity of Nanjing’s duck dishes, we saw many stores where the ducks were just hanging at the entrance (amongst other things). Doesn’t look very sanitary, does it?

We ended back here again that night to take an hour long cruise along the river.  I usually love boat rides, but perhaps it was due to the early start I had to the day, because I found this particular boat ride less than thrilling and actually ended up falling asleep for a bit of it.

For more photos, please visit my Photo Gallery of Confucius Temple 南京夫子廟.

Getting There: Line 1 Sanshanjie Station三山街站