Kung Te-cheng

Biography

The birth of a descendant of Confucius in February 1920 took place under watch. His father, Duke Yansheng Kung Ling-yi, had died in November 1919, leaving a written instruction that if a boy was born, he should inherit the title. His mother, Wang Baocui, was five months pregnant. By some accounts, to rule out a substituted baby, soldiers were posted around the delivery rooms, and representatives of the other “sage” families were present in the house.

The boy was born on 23 February 1920 at the family estate in Qufu, in Shandong. His mother died seventeen days later, and he was raised by his father's legal wife, Lady Tao. On 6 June 1920 President Xu Shichang confirmed him as Duke Yansheng, a title that by tradition, since 1055, had passed to the eldest male descendant of Confucius in the main line. He belonged to the 77th generation; the character “De” (Te) in his name is the generation mark of that line.

From the age of five he studied and conducted household sacrifices in the Confucian temple, and as a child he learned English and played the qin. In 1930 Lady Tao died, and he began to run the household's affairs with the help of relatives and tutors. In the same year the genealogy of the Kung family was revised; the work took seven years and was completed in 1937.

In 1935 the government of the Republic of China abolished the title of Duke Yansheng and created the post of Sacrificial Official to Confucius, with the rank of a minister. Kung Te-cheng was the first to hold it, and he took the oath of office in Nanjing in July. Earlier, in 1928, the family had petitioned in his name to abolish the title while keeping the temple lands.

In December 1936 he married Sun Qifang, a great-granddaughter of Sun Jia'nai, tutor to the imperial court. The wedding took place in Qufu during the Xi'an Incident.

After the Japanese invasion he left Shandong: in January 1938 he reached Hankou and issued an anti-Japanese statement. According to some reports, the Japanese offered him the role of puppet emperor; by his own account he had had no contact with them and considered himself under the orders of the Chinese government. He then lived in Chongqing and studied with historians and epigraphers, among them Wang Xiantang.

From 1946 he was a member of the National Assembly and took part in drafting the 1947 Constitution of the Republic of China, keeping his seat until 1991. In 1947 he visited Qufu for the last time, to pay respects at his ancestors' graves. In 1948 he went to the United States as a research fellow at Yale University, and in the same year he was appointed senior adviser to the President. He held that post until 2000.

In 1949 he moved to Taiwan and settled in Taichung. From 1955 he taught at National Taiwan University, giving courses on the ritual classics, on bronze inscriptions, and on ritual vessels of the Yin and Zhou periods, and he also worked on reconstructing rites from the “Yili”. He gave up teaching only in early 2008. He also taught at Fu Jen Catholic University and at Soochow University. From 1956 to 1964 he directed the National Palace Museum in Taipei. From 1984 to 1993 he was President of the Examination Yuan, the branch of government that oversees civil service examinations. In 2005 National Taiwan University awarded him an honorary doctorate. He officiated at the annual ceremony in honour of Confucius in Taiwan; in the 1990s the post lost its former staff and offices.

Kung Te-cheng died on 28 October 2008 at Tzu Chi Hospital in Taipei. The funeral took place on 30 November, and his coffin was draped with the flag of the Republic of China. His grandson, Kung Tsui-chang, inherited the post of Sacrificial Official to Confucius; since 2009 it has been unpaid.