Duan Yongxuan felt bad after he had fought with one of his classmates. The words of the ancient sages, taught by his teacher, kept going round in his head. Eventually he knew what he had to do.

“I apologized and we patched up our friendship,” the grade-4 primary school student wrote in his diary.

Duan lives in Tangchi Town, Lujiang County, Anhui Province. The town is known for its centuries-old thermal spring and more recently for its Confucian education system.

In Tangchi, there is a trend of children now taking a positive approach when dealing with adversity, just like Duan. It’s what they learn in class. In the town with a population of 48,000, traditional moral education is in vogue. Not only students, adults are getting in on the act too, learning classics written by ancient philosophers and living their lives according to the doctrines.

Zhang Dashu, a middle-aged native of Tangchi, is the town’s role model because of the respect he pays to his parents. He even goes as far as washing their feet, something thought to be embarrassing by most Chinese, who are not used to expressing their feelings, especially to their parents.

Respect for the aged and filial piety are part of the traditional Chinese moral code held sacred in the town. People in Tangchi are taught to respect others, including teachers and parents. They believe that if one loves and respects one’s parents, so one should also love and respect the parents of others and all people in society. Filial reverence, therefore, has deep influence on Tangchi residents.

What goes around comes around

To further promote traditional Chinese virtues, the Lujiang Cultural Education Center was founded in 2005. Its purpose is to popularize ancient moral classics, such as Confucian works, and introduce traditional Chinese culture to visitors. Funded by donations, the center offers free lectures, board and lodging.

Opposite the center is a school specially set up for local residents. The school provides free classes from traditional culture and ethics, to vocational training and food and health knowledge.

Some residents felt that learning in a class was pressure-laden, prompting the management to open a “green class” in a wood near the town’s river. Combining teaching and leisure, the outdoor class has been a great success according to local students.

All the teachers and workers in the school are volunteers, most being white-collar elites who have quit their former jobs, foregone the lure of large salaries and opened their arms to helping others. Besides their lectures, the teachers have also left deep impressions on the students through their profound knowledge and politeness. Teachers smile a lot, bow to others, show respect and modesty and speak in heartfelt ways. The influence around the town is apparent as more residents are seen bowing in greeting and as a sign of respect, reviving what was a traditional etiquette in ancient China.

“Heart-to-heart communication is crucial in our teaching. If the effect of our lectures is not good enough, that means our teachers are not sincere enough when teaching,” said Tsai Li-sui, Education Director of the Lujiang Center.

“Listening to his class is a soulful experience,” said one of Tsai’s students.

Dining in the center is also part of traditional education. There is no noisy talk or disorder in the big dining hall. On entering, teachers and staff bow to the statue of Confucius (551-479 B.C.), China’s great philosopher, and pray to thank nature for the food they are about to eat. All the vegetables served are organically farmed by teachers themselves.

World attention

The “phenomenon of Tangchi” has attracted the attention of many foreigners. Last October, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization invited some of the town’s teachers to Paris, headquarters of the organization, to give one-day lectures on traditional Chinese ethics and morals and their contemporary values. They also held a two-day exhibition about the traditional morally based education in Tangchi, which drew much interest.

The founder of the Lujiang Center is Master Chin Kung, one of the world’s most revered Buddhist monks from the Mahayana Pureland School whose ancestral home is in Anhui Province.