Ningyang Confucius Temple

Ningyang Confucius Temple

The Ningyang Confucius Temple is a National AA-level Tourist Attraction and a Cultural Relics Protection Unit of Shandong Province.

A Confucius Temple, also known as a Temple of Confucius, is built to honor Confucius. The Ningyang Confucius Temple is located in the center of the county town, facing south with its back to the north. It covers an area of nearly 4,000 square meters and is adjacent to the former county government to the west. According to the "Ningyang County Annals—Education" from the first year of the Xianfeng reign during the Qing Dynasty: “The site of the temple was originally the location of the old county office. In the early years of the Yuandade era, the county office moved westward, and the temple was then built here.” Through multiple renovations and expansions during the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Republic of China period, and recent years, a relatively standardized county-level Confucius Temple architectural complex has been formed. It consists of a front courtyard, middle courtyard, and rear courtyard, all aligned along a central north-south axis with clear primary and secondary structures.

The front courtyard houses the wooden Lingxing Gate (which collapsed in 1954 and has since been restored), serving as the main entrance to the Confucius Temple. In front of the gate is a screen wall, and on either side of the outside of the gate are two “Dismount Steles,” inscribed with twelve regular script characters that read: “All civil and military officials, soldiers, and civilians must dismount here.” Inside the Lingxing Gate is a semicircular Pan Pond made of brick. Spanning the pond is a single-arch stone bridge known as the Zhuangyuan Grand Bridge. In the past, only those who achieved the highest imperial examination rank—the Zhuangyuan—could cross this bridge; others had to walk around the pond. On the east and west sides of the Pan Pond were the Donghua Gate and Xihua Gate (now no longer extant).

The middle courtyard is the main architectural area of the Confucius Temple and serves as the space for worshipping Confucius and other ancient sages and scholars. It includes the Dacheng Gate, Minghuan Shrine, Xiuxian Shrine, East and West Side Halls, and the Dacheng Hall. The Dacheng Gate is a structure from the Qing Dynasty, featuring five bays in width and two in depth, with a flush gable roof covered in green glazed tiles. Its bracket sets are painted in color, and it has three sets of wooden doors, with the central door hanging a carved plaque inscribed with golden characters reading “Dacheng Gate.” To the left and right of the Dacheng Gate are the Minghuan Shrine and Xiuxian Shrine, each with three bays, topped with gray-tiled flush gable roofs, enshrining local virtuous scholars and notable officials related to Ningyang.

The Dacheng Hall is a building from the Ming Dynasty and serves as the principal hall for worshipping Confucius, also housing the “Four Accompanying Worthies” and the “Twelve Philosophers.” It is a palatial-style structure with upturned eaves, a hip-and-gable roof covered in yellow glazed tiles. It measures 22.6 meters in length from east to west, 10.8 meters in width from north to south, and stands 11.1 meters tall. It features ornate gold-dusted spiral paintings, and the interior beams are decorated with ink-line paintings. The front eave corridor houses three imperial calligraphy plaques: on the right is the Shian Year (1851) plaque reading “Divinely Inspired Sage,” in the center is the Jiaqing Third Year (1798) plaque reading “Great Synthesis of Sageliness,” and on the left is the Tongzhi First Year (1862) plaque reading “Virtue Enveloping All.” On both sides of the Dacheng Hall are the East and West Side Halls, each with seven bays, topped with gray tiles and featuring verandas with red pillars.

The rear courtyard once housed the Minglun Hall (the building’s foundation remains), forming a traditional layout of temple in the front and school in the rear.

Over the more than 700 years since its establishment, the Ningyang Confucius Temple has preserved many precious stone steles, which serve as valuable historical materials for studying the veneration of Confucius and the promotion of Confucianism throughout various dynasties. Key among them are: the Imperial Edict Stele from the 11th year of the Yuandade era (1307) granting Confucius the title “Great Achieving, Most Holy, Literary and Exemplary King”; the Eastern Han-style stone stele from the 2nd year of the Yuanzhizheng era (1342) titled “Record of the Reconstruction of the Temple of the Holy Confucius”; the Qing Dynasty’s Kangxi Tenth Year (1671) stele “Exemption of Miscellaneous Duties for the Descendants of the Four Sages”; the Kangxi Forty-Ninth Year (1710) stele “Record of the Reconstruction of the Temple and School”; and the 29th year of the Republic of China (1940) stele “Record of the Reconstruction of the Confucius Temple.” These steles were toppled and buried underground in the early years after liberation but were excavated and restored during the renovation of the Confucius Temple, and they remain largely well-preserved.

At the founding of New China, most counties still retained their Confucius Temples. After the ten-year Cultural Revolution, the Confucius Temples in other counties (cities, districts) of Tai’an City were successively demolished, leaving the Ningyang Confucius Temple as the sole survivor. Among county-level cities in the province, few have preserved their Confucius Temples as intact as Ningyang’s. In recent years, the government has allocated special funds to comprehensively restore and rescue structures such as the Dacheng Gate, Dacheng Hall, East and West Side Halls, Xiuxian Shrine, and Minghuan Shrine, with restoration work still ongoing. In 1994, the Tai’an Municipal Government designated the Ningyang Confucius Temple as a Municipal Cultural Relics Protection Unit. In May 2000, the Shandong Provincial Department of Construction and the Department of Culture listed it as an Outstanding Historical Building of Shandong Province. In 2006, it was declared a “Provincial-Level Cultural Relics Protection Unit.”

Further Reading:

· Third Batch of Shandong Provincial Cultural Relics Protection Units