"The mountains look up, the scenery stops, although you can't get there, but the heart yearns for it." Sima Qian specifically quoted this sentence from the Book of Songs in "Historical Records: The Family of Confucius" to express his admiration and admiration for Confucius's thoughts. And many descendants have also found an image and appropriate realistic target for the "high mountain" here - Nishan, the birthplace of Confucius.
Once upon a time, Nishan, located in the southeast of Qufu, was famous but few people cared about, which formed a sharp contrast with the bustling Confucian Mansion and Confucian Temple located in the main urban area. Occasionally, visitors commented, "The stone is not strange and nameless, and the mountain is not high and spiritual." As everyone knows, although this mountain is not as strange as the "three mountains" and the "five mountains" as high, it has become a mountain of civilization that shakes the past and the present.
In 2009, a delegation from Lingshan Cultural Tourism Group in Wuxi City, Jiangsu Province was invited to visit Nishan. Wu Guoping, then chairman of Wuxi Lingshan Cultural Tourism Group Co., Ltd., was suddenly excited at the moment when he stood on the Guanchuan Pavilion, and bluntly said that Confucius's thousand-year-old sigh of "the deceased is like a husband, reluctant to give up day and night" hit him across time and space and impartially. Perhaps it was also from that moment that the "Nishan Sacred Realm" had its own emotional and cultural prototype.
Needless to say, Wu Guoping depicted a "beautiful dream" of "the mountain is not high, and the immortal is famous" for the living life of the excellent traditional Chinese culture in Nishan. The dreamers are skilled craftsmen and countless project workers from all over the country. Let's ask, how much effort and sweat has been integrated into this land nourished by traditional culture more than 2,500 years later? Perhaps only those who have witnessed the splitting of mountains and chiseling stones, and the addition of terraces and pavilions can tell clearly.
From 2012 to 2019, seven years have passed like a white horse. At the foot of Nishan, the "holy realm" rises in the wilderness of the mountain township, "benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and faith, gentleness, courtesy and frugality" become bright, happy and vibrant, and the "number of books on etiquette and archery" becomes vivid, interesting and experienced...... The mountain of civilization finally has a new era of culture commensurate with its heritage. In this Oriental holy land, which is carefully built according to the "cultural heritage of the future", tourists not only find a way to touch "Confucius" up close, but also begin to re-examine the excellent traditional Chinese culture, and regain cultural self-confidence in cultural self-knowledge.
The birthplace of Confucius is no longer deserted, and well-known Confucian experts, excellent traditional culture lovers, young students, and researchers at home and abroad have come one after another. And this piece of mountains and rivers that once gave birth to sages has also ushered in his new historical mission.
On September 26, 2010, the first Nishan World Civilization Forum opened in Nishan, opening a new door for exchanges and mutual learning between Eastern and Western civilizations. Dignitaries, merchants, and cultural scholars from all over the world come here to explore the common values of all mankind that have always been hidden in oriental culture.
In ancient times, there were seventy-two wise people and true knowledge, and now there are people with lofty ideals from all over the world to gather consensus. From "harmony and diversity and a harmonious world" to "the diversity of human civilization and the common values of all mankind", to the upcoming 10th Nishan Forum on World Civilizations...... For more than 10 years, ideas have collided here and civilizations have blended here. As a result, Nishan has become an "important town" for the exchange of world civilizations.
For a long time, we are not accustomed to, nor do we like to regard the "Nishan Sacred Land" as a simple cultural tourism project, because he is more like a seed, in the birthplace of Confucius, when the ground was broken, he opened up the covering soil of traditional culture throughout the ancient and modern, from temples to life, from academia to art, and used his increasingly abundant roots to continuously absorb nutrients in the soil, and supported a large platform that is enough to accommodate multicultural forms.
As soon as the tree of civilization stands, thousands of flowers bloom!
On September 28, 2018, about 200 million people watched the CCTV Mid-Autumn Festival Gala at the same time. On the full moon night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Chinese people around the world truly felt the essence and charm of Confucian culture through TV and mobile phones;
On May 15, 2021, the "Belt and Road" annual Chinese character release event was held here. The word "mutual" conveys the Chinese wisdom in the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road";
On June 27, 2023, the World Internet Conference (WC) took the first time to launch a dialogue on digital civilization. The participants not only discussed the opportunities and challenges brought by AI technology to human civilization, but also explored the feasible paradigm of AI global governance.
On August 13, 2023, the second season of the "Young Director Creation Support Program" was staged here. Three generations of drama creators and actors from the National Theatre of China have moved to Nishan to create art, interpreting the excellent traditional Chinese culture with traditional drama......
Jining will make efforts to break through the construction of the Nishan area, accelerate the implementation of the three-year action plan for the upgrading project of the Nishan World Civilization Forum, and make every effort to build a new cultural "two innovations" highland integrating the highland of world civilization exchanges and mutual learning, the pilot demonstration area of cultural "two innovations", and the world famous cultural tourism city. Well-known Confucian experts and scholars at home and abroad, excellent traditional culture lovers and celebrities from all walks of life gathered in Nishan, where they longed to find a common spiritual home, and Nishan has changed, and Nishan, which is not very high, has become taller and more famous.
"Covered in soil on a sunny day, muddy on a rainy day", "Climb the slope when you go out, and eat food by the shoulder...... The folk song, which has been circulated for decades, was once a true portrayal of Nishan. Today's Nishan, "ten minutes on the high-speed, fifteen minutes on the high-speed rail, one hour to the airport"; Guests and tourists can enjoy the scenery of the lake and mountains at the Nishan Guest House, return to the poetic pastoral garden of the Cultivation and Reading Academy, experience the "Six Arts" of Confucius in the Confucius Mountain Residence, breathe freely in the "forest" of the Confucius Lake Wetland Park, the once rugged and muddy mountain roads have become wide asphalt roads, and the traditional villages have been injected with modern cultural and creative elements, and the villagers who have been "relying on the mountains and the water" for generations have eaten "cultural rice" and "tourist meals", and have become homestay owners and intangible cultural heritage craftsmen. With the blessing of the "two creations" of China's excellent traditional culture, Nishan has burst out with vitality and charm, and has become an Internet celebrity check-in place for cultural tourism.
Some people are surprised that Luyuan New Village at the foot of Nishan Mountain can have infrastructure and governance capabilities comparable to that of the city, and that the village, regardless of men, women and children, can be polite and virtuous; Some people are shocked that the rural primary school on the shore of Shengshui Lake can cultivate young people who are both proficient in Chinese studies and foreign languages, when it is clear that there are only dozens of desks and chairs in the entire campus; Some people are amazed that the "Nishan Sacred Realm" is just one of the "new three holes" in Confucius's hometown, and that the Confucius Research Institute, Confucius Museum and other institutions have bravely undertaken new cultural missions on the road of promoting the excellent traditional Chinese culture such as research and interpretation, dissemination and exchange, and popularization and promotion...... Let the derivation and inheritance of culture be seen everywhere, and vibrant, endless, and endless.
The change in Nishan is a change in cultural form, a change in ideology, a change in the international environment, and a change in the cultural confidence of the Chinese nation and its sons and daughters.
In the future, as far as "Confucius" can see, civilizations will be integrated. Nishan will continue to watch over the cultural inheritance and innovation on this land, so that the most basic cultural genes of the Chinese nation can adapt to contemporary culture and harmonize with modern society, and carry forward the cultural spirit that transcends time and space, transcends national boundaries, is full of eternal charm and has contemporary value.
(Reporter Meng Yi)
Source: Popular Daily