Legend & Origin
By worldly measures, Confucius's life was not a success. He was born in the state of Lu at the close of the Spring and Autumn period; he lost his father young, grew up poor, and found his footing through relentless study. In middle age he spent fourteen years traveling from state to state, promoting a political vision built on benevolence, righteousness, and propriety — and met closed doors everywhere he went, for not a single ruler truly put him to use.
In his later years he returned to Lu and did the one thing that would echo for two thousand years: he taught. He took in three thousand disciples, seventy-two of them sages, and edited the Six Classics. Confucius died in 479 BC at the age of seventy-three. The teacher who went unappreciated in life was raised up by one dynasty after another after his death, from 'King of Culture' to 'Great Sage and First Teacher of Great Completion.'
In 1665, Zheng Jing built Taiwan's first official Confucius temple in Tainan; and during the Japanese colonial era, under the pressure of a foreign culture, Taiwanese gentry insisted on keeping the rites to Confucius alive. A man who met walls everywhere in life became teacher to an entire civilization — his story is itself the finest proof that education can change the world.