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Kong Fuzi (孔夫子551 – 479 BCE), popularly known in the West by the Latinized name of Confucius, was a teacher and a philosopher who shaped Chinese culture for the last 2,500 years. His personal name was Qiu (丘) and courtesy name* Zhongni (字 仲尼). He lived towards the end of the period referred to by historians as the “Spring and Autumn” (春秋时期) of the Zhou dynasty (周朝 ~1200 – 221 BCE). During this time there was a nominal Zhou king as the overlord but China was fragmented into many states the rulers of which were vying with each other on expanding their power and domains.

Kong Fuzi was born in the state of Lu (鲁国）the present day province of Shandong (山东省) where the ancient rites and music were kept most completely. Given his family ancestry that could be traced to the kings of the ancient Shang dynasty (around 1800 - 1200 BCE), Kong Fuzi was well versed in the rituals, the ethical code and the underlying and philosophy that had been handed down from antiquity. As a young man he conducted funeral rites for the aristocracy of the Lu state.
Like most educated men of his time, Kong Fuzi’s ambition was to be an official serving the lord of some state. He was a low-ranking official for short periods of time here and there. Sometime in his 50s, he was made the prime minister of the state of Lu but his tenure of office lasted only three months. On the whole his political career was sporadic and lackluster as his views were generally not accepted by the rulers.

For most of his life Kong Fuzi was a teacher. Together with some students he went from state to state trying to find any rulers willing to listen to his ideas. Unable to fulfill his political and public service aspirations, he returned to his native state of Lu and devoted his life to education and to compiling and editing ancient texts and traditions. It is said that he had over 3000 students.

While Kong Fuzi’s political philosophy was conservative and in support of the ruling class, he was a revolutionary as an educator. Up to his time only the children of the aristocracy were educated but he took in students from all walks of life; some of them were of humble origins. After his death, his ideas and deeds and those of his disciples were compiled into a volume known as Lun Yu ( 论语), often translated into English as The Analects of Confucius or the Sayings of Kong Fuzi.
Lun Yu consists of 20 chapters and only about 12,000 characters. The style is terse but the content is profound. His pedagogy is to pose a question to his students, thus making them think and drawing out their responses. Then he would clarify the issue.

That he was a wise teacher could be seen in the opening lesson of Lun Yu as compiled by the later editors:

The Master said:”To learn and to put into practice what one has learned, isn’t that a joy? To have friends come from afar, isn’t that a pleasure? To be unrecognized by others without harboring resentment, isn’t that the hallmark of a noble character?” (Lun Yu 1:1).
论语 学而篇第一
子曰：学而时习之，不亦说乎？有朋友远方來，不亦乐乎？人不知而不愠，不亦君子乎？

*A courtesy name was one given to a person upon entering into adulthood. Thereafter, out of respect for the person, only the courtesy name would be used by others of the same generation. The personal name given at birth would then only be used by those of older generations. Hence the character zi 字 as used in regards to names is translated into English as the courtesy name. In the later dynasties it was not customary to give courtesy names to women. Kong Fuzi’s courtesy name Zhongni indicates that he was the second son in his family.