BEIJING (AFP) - China plans a city-sized monument celebrating
traditional Chinese culture and centred on the birthplace of the
philosopher Confucius, state media said Sunday.
The "Chinese Culture Symbolic City" in eastern Shandong province will
cost at least 4.2 billion dollars and span more than 300 square
kilometres (115 square miles), Xinhua news agency quoted those
involved in the project as saying.
Project organisers will begin soliciting design proposals for the
plan next week but already envision a memorial hall to Confucius and
monuments to other memorable Chinese figures from the past.
The monument would also celebrate Chinese technical breakthroughs
such as paper-making up to recent successes such as the launch of a
lunar probe, Xinhua said.
The plan marks perhaps the most spectacular embodiment of a rebirth
in interest in traditional Chinese culture.
In particular, Confucius's 2,500-year-old teachings of peace and
social harmony have come back into
vogue as an antidote to the rapid and chaotic development of modern
China.
"No culture can survive without the matrix in which it was born," Xu
Jialu, a parliament member and project initiator, was quoted as
telling a press conference in Beijing.
"The traditional Chinese culture is part of the Chinese people's
identity, and we need to bring that back in the face of an
increasingly superficial and chaotic world."
The "city" will incorporate the ancient city of Qufu, ancestral home
of Confucius, and nearby Zoucheng, home of the later Confucian
philosopher Mencius, and a mountain range between them.
China's Confucian revival has been tacitly encouraged by the
communist government as a calming influence amid growing public
dissatisfaction over China's economic and social growing pains.
Construction is expected to begin by 2010.
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