In the 19th year of the Zhiyuan era, Kublai Khan, the founding emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, learned through an investigation that “the descendants of Confucius residing in Quzhou were in fact the legitimate branch.” In order to revive the Confucian rites and values in the Yuan Dynasty, Crown Prince Zhenjin, the leader of the Han legalist faction, decided to disguise himself as a commoner and personally travel to the Jiangnan region.

During his search for virtuous talents in Jiangnan, Zhenjin developed a relationship of both mentorship and friendship with Kong Zhu, the Duke Yansheng (hereditary title of Confucius’s descendants). He also fell in love with Kong Zhu’s daughter, Kong Liu. Under Zhenjin’s encouragement, Kong Zhu rekindled his ambition to serve the country and its people. He resolved to return to the north in pursuit of opportunities to realize his ideals, and Kong Liu, too, decided to follow her father to Dadu (present-day Beijing).

At the Yuan court, Kong Zhu came to realize Zhenjin’s true identity, and his ideals gradually came into tension with the prevailing atmosphere of the imperial court.Deeply realizing that to fulfill his aspirations he must bring Confucianism from the imperial court to the common people, Kong Zhu made a righteous decision before Kublai Khan: he renounced his noble title and transformed himself from an official into a civilian. Upon returning to Jiangnan, Kong Zhu, with the Southern Kong clan at the core, fostered a flourishing Jiangnan cultural landscape marked by “poetry and ritual passed down through generations, and the emergence of virtuous talents.”