I come late to the Halloween Party. At some point I may find words to describe the chaos of the past few months…and catch up on reading all the great posts y’all did while I was AWL (OverWhelmed by Life).

Several folks I follow have posted for the creative JNW’s Halloween Challenge, this week two topics from the challenge: forest and cemetery, right beside each other, reminded me that I went to two pretty unusual cemeteries this past year.

Kong Lin

Kong Forest (Kong Lin) is actually the burial ground for the Kong (family name of Confusius) clan for many, many generations.* If you have any interest this is a very informative Wikipedia article about Confucius (and other Kongs to some extent). Almost all of these pictures were taken from the comfort of a motorized cart; by the time I had walked from the hotel to the entrance, then through the Kong Temple (Kong Miao) and Kong Mansion (with gardens) to the Kong Lin my feet felt like the bones were poking through, so I didn’t get off until we got to the big guy’s tomb. It’s a fascinating and very atmospheric place, I’d love to go back sometime and start with the “forest”.

Confucius’s Tomb

Actuallly his is the simpler tomb behind the throne.

Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires.

This was unique in my experience (I don’t know if it is unique in the world, but I found it fascinating and have never seen anything like it before). It isn’t a forest, but it is a city of the dead within the very alive city of Buenos Aires.

*Wikipedia notes that

Confucius’s family, the Kongs, have the longest recorded extant pedigree in the world today. The father-to-son family tree, now in its 83rd generation, has been recorded since the death of Confucius. According to the Confucius Genealogy Compilation Committee, he has 2 million known and registered descendants, and there are an estimated 3 million in all. Of these, several tens of thousands live outside of China.