Confucius says

It was 9 a.m., and the street in front of Confucius' mansion was empty, save for a broken-down nag harnessed to a decrepit wooden wagon, whose peeling paint was once intended to suggest the glory of the ancient Kingdom of Lu.

Our group stepped off the bus and gathered at the gates. Gracefully arched eaves stretched upward from behind the stone walls of the compound.

I'd been on a budget bus tour of China with 19 other tourists for a week, and now we were making a stop in the town of Qufu. At each stop, guide Li Chunhua had given us a traditional saying as a cultural souvenir. Now she recounted our itinerary, slogan by slogan.

"We have been heroes at the Great Wall. We let go of our hearts when we crossed the Yellow River. Yesterday, we joined the immortals at the mountain Tai Shan. Now, Confucius will confuse us."

Li, an athletic woman with coal-black hair tied back in a pony tail, pulled on her canvas sailor's hat, lifted her blue "China Focus" flag and led us into the first courtyard. The shuttered buildings, constructed of brick and stone, retained a regal air, but the place seemed oddly lifeless and dusty. "Confucius never lived here," Li said. "This was the mansion given to his descendants, after he died. In his lifetime, he wasn't always appreciated and he wasn't that well known. "

Confucius is the Westernized version of the great philosopher's Chinese name: Kong Fu Tze. Kong was his family name and Fu Tze is an honorific akin to master teacher. He was born more than 2,500 years ago, a tumultuous age in China. Multiple kingdoms and fiefdoms were waging war, trying to achieve ascendancy.

Born into a well-to-do family, Confucius became a government official. Later he eschewed wealth, becoming an itinerant wise man who advised kings and dukes on how to rule, and individuals on how to fill their roles in society.

His enduring ethos

We walked past temple halls, living quarters and more courtyards. The mansion compound -- 40 acres and about 450 buildings -- along with thousands of acres of land were given to the Kong family in perpetuity by the emperor as a gift of gratitude for the ideas that Confucius passed down.

We'd been in the compound for an hour by ourselves when suddenly the place came roaring to life. Legions of kids in tracksuits, tourists in matching baseball caps and guides barking through megaphones swirled in human currents around us, forcing Li to shout as she explained what we were seeing.

"Until 1999, we only had three holidays," Li said, explaining the profusion of tourists. "Labor Day, National Day and National Festival. Otherwise, we worked six days a week, year-round. Now the government is encouraging companies to have holidays, just like in your country."

The government is also urging a return to traditional values and ideas, Li said. "During the Cultural Revolution, this place was badly damaged. All over China, people hid their Confucius books and scrolls, or burned them. Now his ideas are OK again."

Li encouraged us to read them sometime, but her sour expression belied a tainted view of the sage. "He only wrote one sentence about women, and it was 'They are petty and difficult; if you get too close they take advantage and if you stay too far they get resentful.'" (And yet, even with that attitude, Confucius somehow managed to produce offspring. Li pointed out that of Qufu's population of 600,000, more than 120,000 are direct descendants.)

Confucius' legacy lives on in China in the way parents urge their children to do their utmost, and in the duty that children feel toward their parents later in life, Li said.

In other regards, he is much like the world's other great teachers, offering lessons that are as hard to live up to now as they were then, such as: "Exemplary persons help out the needy; they do not make the rich richer" or "Do not impose on others what you yourself do not want."

From cradle to grave

We passed through the back gate of the mansion into a forest known as Confucius' Woods, and it was almost like passing from the waking world into a dream. For eight days and 400 miles, we'd traveled through concrete cities and traversed highways crossing roughly cultivated farmland; I don't think I'd even seen a dozen trees close together in one place since my arrival in China. Here we were in deep shade, created by manicured rows of ancient hardwoods and pines. The lush ground cover produced a haze of fine purple flowers.

The fact that this cemetery, where Confucius rests in a shaded tomb, survived the Cultural Revolution and all the other upheavals in 2,500 years of Chinese history is a testimony to how important the philosopher is in the country's history.

"This is the best-preserved family cemetery in the world," Li said. "There are 100,000 graves, with two people in each one, all related to Confucius. Only married people are allowed." To this day, married direct descendants of Confucius have the right to be buried in the graveyard. "My son's grandfather and grandmother are buried here," she said.

Li had told us earlier that when she wasn't leading tours, she lived with her husband and son in Qufu, but we hadn't known she'd married into the Kong family.

"Will your husband be buried here?" one of the women in our group asked.

"If he's still married to me, he will," she said.