The fame of Han Gaozu's ancestor Liu Bang is needless to say, as a reckless man, he actually jumped up and became the emperor. After the establishment of the Han Dynasty, he established many new regulations according to the old system of the Qin Dynasty, and everyone in the world had to pay tribute to the emperor, even including his parents.
That is to say, even Liu Bang and his father had to kneel when they saw him. However, Liu Bang himself was a commoner, so how could he make his father kneel? So he came up with a good idea, to make his father the Emperor Taishang, so he didn't have to kneel to the emperor. Later generations also followed this practice.
It can be said that the emperor has been a lifelong man, and there are really not many people kneeling. The Kangxi Emperor, later known as the "Emperor of the Ages", hesitated in front of Confucius's tomb and refused to kneel. It turned out that it was because there was such a word on the tombstone...
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC), famous Qiu, the character Zhongni, is a famous thinker and educator in ancient China, the founder of the Confucian school, with three thousand disciples. The Analects, one of the four books of our country, recorded his ideological concepts.
Confucius was the most knowledgeable person in society at that time, and he was called "The Sage of Kong", "The Most Holy", and "The Master of All Ages" by later generations, which is enough to see his high status. His ideas of "serving the government with virtue" and "not doing to others what you do not want" have been used by later emperors.
This saint was not only a high-ranking intellectual, but also proficient in riding and shooting, and his physical strength was amazing. "Lü's Spring and Autumn" records: "Confucius's strength can lift the door of the country, but he refuses to smell it with force", and opening the city gate with his bare hands is also quite fierce.
Such a saint was greatly respected by the emperors, and Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty even promoted the view of "deposing a hundred families and respecting Confucianism alone".
Ai Xin jue luo Xuan Ye (born 1654), the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, ascended the throne at the age of 8, pro-government at the age of 14, reigned for 61 years, the longest reigning emperor in Chinese history, the era name Kangxi.
The Kangxi Emperor also respected this saint, and during his reign, he made six southern tours and came to Qufu, Shandong. Qufu is located in the southwest of Shandong Province, the capital of the State of Lu in the Spring and Autumn Period (770 BC), known as the "Holy City of the East", and is the hometown of Confucius.
As soon as they entered the Confucius Temple, the Qing Dynasty ministers who advocated confucius and Mencius thought prostrated their heads and bowed their heads, and originally, Kangxi also planned to perform the kneeling ceremony to this saint, on the one hand, to show his dignity as an emperor, and on the other hand, to set an example for the courtiers.
But just as Kangxi was about to kneel, he saw a line on Confucius's tombstone. He stopped moving and stood there for a long time, for a moment, the atmosphere was very awkward, and the courtiers did not even dare to breathe.
At this time, a wise minister discovered the problem - Confucius's tombstone was inscribed with the inscription "Dacheng Most Holy Wen Xuanwang" seven characters, and it was this "wang" that made Emperor Kangxi reluctant to kneel. How can you kneel before another "king"?
So he immediately found a piece of cloth to cover the word "king", and Kangxi Ye nodded his head and performed three prayers and nine prostrations to Confucius's tombstone. At this point, the courtiers put their minds at ease.
It seems that the enlightened emperor also has his own little nine-nine. As a famous thinker in China, Confucius's advanced ideas are still in use today and are important cultural treasures in China.