Kong Family Mansion

The story

The descendants of Confucius were honoured by every dynasty, and in 1055 the Song (960–1279) emperor gave the head of the family the title Duke Yansheng. It passed from father to son until 1935, when the government replaced it with the office of Sacrificial Official to Confucius. The family kept the mansion, its lands and its archives, one of the largest private archives in China, with records from the 16th century to the 20th.

The present buildings are mostly Ming and Qing (1644–1912), begun after 1377 and enlarged in 1503: over four hundred rooms in nine courtyards. The last duke, Kong Decheng, left for Taiwan in 1949. The mansion is now a museum, kept as the family left it.

Part of Qufu: Temple, Mansion and Cemetery of Confucius. Also there: Temple of Confucius, Cemetery of Confucius.

What is here

The mansion has its own ticket of 60 yuan, or is part of the 140-yuan combined ticket for the three Kong sites.

If you have one minute

At the inner gate

Between the offices and the private house stands the inner gate, beyond which no outsider could pass. On the wall facing it is painted a strange beast, the tan, so greedy it tried to swallow the sun and drowned in the sea. Each duke saw it as he left home for official business: a warning against greed.

Beyond the gate are the rooms where the family lived, with furniture, clothes and gifts from emperors still in place, and at the back a garden with rockeries and an old tree in which five cypresses grow round a pagoda tree.

Things people often get wrong

"The family were emperors." They were nobles with a title and great estates, but they served the court, and the duke kneeled to the emperor like any official.

"The line ended in 1949." The family continues; the 79th-generation heir lives in Taiwan and holds the office of Sacrificial Official.

People who stood here

We searched Chinese sources first for this list, then English ones.

• Kong Lingyi (76th Duke Yansheng, 1872–1919)He held the title in the last years of the Qing and the first of the Republic, and died a few months before his son was born.
• Kong Decheng (77th and last Duke Yansheng, 1920–2008)Born a duke, he grew up here, became the first Sacrificial Official in 1935, and later taught at National Taiwan University.
• Kong Demao (writer, born 1917)His elder sister, who wrote a memoir of growing up in the inner rooms of the mansion.
• The Qianlong Emperor (1711–1799)On his eight visits to Qufu he was received by the dukes; gifts he gave the family are shown in the mansion.

Go deeper: through the mansion from the gate to the garden, five stops6 stops · about 1 min to read

The mansion is entered from the east side of the temple; follow the axis from the front gate to the garden.

1. The gate of the sage's descendants

The main gate, with a plaque reading "Sage's Mansion". The family's motto, written on the couplet beside it, wishes the house equal to the state in lasting peace and wealth.

2. The Great Hall

Where the duke sat to receive edicts and judge cases, with the red-lacquered tables and the ceremonial weapons and banners carried before him on journeys.

3. The inner gate and the painting of the tan

The line between office and home. The painted beast warning against greed faces the gate.

4. The family rooms

The front hall where the family held birthdays and weddings, and the rooms behind where the ladies of the house lived.

5. The garden

Rockeries, ponds and old trees, first laid out in 1503 and redone in the Qing.

The mansion and the same years elsewhere

In 1055, when the title Duke Yansheng was created, the Seljuk Turks entered Baghdad.