Cemetery of Confucius
The cemetery suffered serious damage in November 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, when it was visited and vandalized by a team of Red Guards from Beijing Normal University, led by Tan Houlan (谭厚兰).[3][4] The corpse of the 76th generation Duke Yansheng Kong Lingyi [zh] (1872–1919), a late Qing official known for his collaboration with Japan, was removed from its grave and hung naked from a tree in front of the palace during the Cultural Revolution.The avenue runs north for 1266 m as a wide boulevard decorated with the Wan gu chang chun (萬古長春) memorial arch and lined by cypresses and pine trees, finally arriving at the main (southern) gates of the cemetery.Since Confucius' descendants were conferred noble titles (Duke Yansheng) and were given imperial princesses as wives, many of the tombs in the cemetery show the status symbols of noblemen.In the Ming section, particularly notable is a comparatively small area located about 1 km to the northwest of the Tomb of Confucius, where about a dozen of Dukes of Yansheng, from the 55th to the 64th generation, have been buried.Each duke has his own spirit way, oriented from the south to the north, which typically includes (in the south-to-north order) the following sculptures: three pairs of animals (felines, sometimes winged; rams; horses); a memorial arch; a bixi with a stele; two guardian figures (a warrior on the west side of the path, and a civil official on the east side); and a stele in front of the small tumulus under which the duke is buried.