Story of China

So the ideas of Confucius weren't religious, they were what we would call political, and that's another key to the story of China, the core ideals of their civilization were not theological, they were ethical. Good governance would come if the elite were educated and the king was virtuous. Without virtue Confucius thought any ruler was morally bankrupt and should be resisted. He traveled the roads of China like some intellectual troubleshooter, trying to sell China's local rulers his New Deal. At his tomb I met a group of Confucian teachers from Korea. These gentlemen are not priests, they're scholars, and what they're doing is not so much religion as ritual, an act of reverence for the old master and his ideal of universal brotherhood. Bowing before his tombstone, which was smashed to pieces by the communist Red Guards only 50 years ago, but is now restored. (man speaking in foreign language) -

Translator

We are here to honor Confucius, but why are you here? Ah, very good question. So we are interested in the history of China, and Confucius is so important, that that is why we are here. But for them, of course, Confucius is a living teacher, in an unbroken tradition of 2,500 years. (man speaking in foreign language) All over the world, people, they should know about the Confucius. Love should spread all over the world, not just individual. Yeah, love, benevolence, courtesy, good manners, these are the way society works when society works well in Confucius' idea. -

Crowd

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Confucius was condemned during the Communist Revolution as the embodiment of old ideas and old customs, but now once more he's a national treasure, praised by the government for his stress on social values, though not so much perhaps for his insistence that it is the intellectual's duty to speak truth to power. But in both he's a symbol of the Chinese way. (children speaking in foreign language) Very good, oh. very good, (speaks foreign language), thank you very much, fantastic, very, very good. (peaceful music)