{"id":172,"date":"2006-09-26T19:06:32","date_gmt":"2006-09-27T00:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/2006\/09\/happy-2557th-birthday-to-you\/"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:40:10","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:40:10","slug":"happy-2557th-birthday-to-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2006\/09\/happy-2557th-birthday-to-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy 2,557th Birthday to you!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, on September 28th Taiwan will be celebrating the 2,557th birthday of Confucius. The date may be a bit off (he is getting a bit forgetful in his old age), but to still be celebrated after all these years is an accomplishment. As in the past there will be a direct descendant to officiate, they will play the ancient music, and an offering of food will be made. (When I was there it was a dead ox carried by two rather irate Taiwanese laborers) The high point of the ritual is the dance, done by young male students carrying feathers.<\/p>\n

\n

\"Confucian<\/div>\n

The boys practice and perform the dance to show their sincere respect for Chinese tradition and the teachings of Confucius. Also, if you get a piece of one of the feathers it is supposed to be good luck on your college entrance exams. When I was there a scrum developed after the ritual as various youngsters tried to get bits of feather, I assume being one of the dancers puts you in a good opening position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes, on September 28th Taiwan will be celebrating the 2,557th birthday of Confucius. The date may be a bit off (he is getting a bit forgetful in his old age), but to still be celebrated after all these years is an accomplishment. As in the past there will be a direct descendant to officiate, they…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[165,118,122,126,161],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-education","category-events","category-general","category-taiwan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-2M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5013,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions\/5013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}