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Hello in the 5th century BC, a wise man called Kung Fu. you maxim helped form the body of ideas which more than Buddhism, more than Taoism, more even

than communism has defined what it is to be Chinese. It's a philosophy that we call Confucianism. Confucius

is the Latinization of Kung Fuzieu and as well as asserting the importance of learning from the past

it embodies a respect for hierarchy, ritual and self cultivation through learning.

Confucius said, learning without thought is labour lost.

Thought without learning is perilous.

But who was Confucius and how did his ideas manage to become the bedrock for a civilization.

With me to go over 2,000 years of China's past in the hope of divining the future of

Confucianism is Francis Wood, curator of the Chinese section of the British Library,

Tim Barrett, professor of East Asian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies

of London University, and Dr. Teo Toh Liu tutorial fellow in Oriental Studies at Waddam College, Oxford.

I'll start with you, Dr Tohilu.

Who, just briefly, who was Confucius? What kind of man was he?

How did he start teaching?

He was a kind of itinerant teacher at the time. He belonged to a class of people who were coming up to the fore of what we call in Chinese as the shoo which is invariably translated as the scribes and knights. in belong to the noble houses. And they were well educated, and they went around trying to find a job of their own,

and they propounded their own ideas.

And he wasn't the only one.

At that time, in fact, there were quite a lot of other people all propounding their own ideas.

But his ideas with the disciples that followed him came to dominate China. But at that time in the early days, it was just

one of many.

...