China's first temple dedicated to Confucius was built in the Master's native village of Qufu, Shandong in 478 B.C., two years after he died. UNESCO recognised the temple and surrounding area as a World Cultural Heritage Site.
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| China temple dedicated to Confucius |
While the plan of the Temple of Literature in Ha Noi is similar to that of the Confucian Temple in Qufu, the former has several unique features. The architecture of the Ha Noi Temple is distinctly Vietnamese in character. As its name indicates, the Temple of Literature honours other scholars in addition to Confucius. The Temple also houses steles of tiến sĩ or doctoral laureates. In China, similar doctoral steles are housed at the Temple to Confucius in Beijing, which was built in 1302, almost 130 years after the Temple of Literature in Ha Noi.
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| The Temple of Literature in Hanoi |
The Beijing temple contains 198 doctoral steles, similar in nature to those in Ha Noi. The steles were erected between 1313 and 1904, recording the identities of 51,624 laureates. Two of the names on the steles, interestingly enough, are Vietnamese: Le Dung from Thanh Oai District in Ha Tay Province and Nguyen Can from Quynh Phu District in Thai Binh Province. It is not clear why these two men travelled to China for their examinations in 1452, since Vietnamese examinations were a regularly organised at the time. Le Dung became a senior mandarin in the Ministry of Civil Engineering; Nguyen Can's subsequent career is unknown.