Of all the neighbors, none was closer to us than the Confucius Temple; it shared a wall with our kitchen. The shrine was one of the city’s most tranquil places, a secluded compound built in 1302, with ancient trees and a tall wooden pavilion that loomed above our house like a conscience. In the mornings, I brought a cup of coffee outside and listened to the wake-up sounds next door: the brush of a broom across the flagstones, the squeak of a faucet, the hectoring of the magpies overhead. It was a small miracle that the temple had survived at all. Thousands of shrines across the country once
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