孔子是谁？
Who was Confucius?
Name: ________________ Date: ________
两千五百多年前，在郑国的城门口，有人对一个年轻人说：“东门那儿站着一个人，看起来又累又失落，像一条没有家的狗。”年轻人回去，把这句话转告了自己的老师。老师听了，不但没有生气，反而愉快地笑了：“说我像一条没有家的狗？说得对，说得对！”
这位老师就是孔子，那个年轻人是他的学生子贡。今天，孔子是中国最著名的老师。可是他活着的时候，日子一点也不顺利。
公元前551年，孔子出生在鲁国，也就是今天的山东。他三岁的时候，父亲就去世了，母亲带着他过着贫穷的生活。年轻的时候，他做过很多普通的工作：管过仓库，账算得清清楚楚；也养过牛羊，养得又多又肥。
后来，他在鲁国当了大官，负责法律。可是他推行的改革失败了，五十多岁的时候，他离开了鲁国。
之后的十四年，他带着学生走了一个又一个国家，希望有国王愿意采用他的主张。可是没有一个国王真正重用他。有一次，他们在路上被困住了，连饭都吃不上。那个“没有家的狗”的故事，就发生在这些年里。
快七十岁的时候，孔子回到鲁国，不再当官，专心教书。据说他一共有三千个学生，其中七十二个特别优秀。《论语》里说，不管是谁，只要带一点肉干来当学费，就可以做他的学生。在那个时代，能读书的大多是贵族，所以这是很了不起的事。
公元前479年，孔子去世了，活了七十多岁。他自己没有写过书。他死后，学生们把他平时说的那些话记录下来，编成了一本书，就是《论语》。比如“温故而知新”：把学过的知识拿出来再复习一遍，就会有新的收获。还有“己所不欲，勿施于人”：自己不喜欢的事，就不要对别人做。
活着的时候，孔子到处寻找愿意听他的人，却没有找到。死了以后，中国人听了他两千多年。
Key words
| Word | Pinyin | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 愉快 | yúkuài | happy; pleasant; delightful |
| 著名 | zhùmíng | famous; well-known; celebrated |
| 活 | huó | work; job |
| 顺利 | shùnlì | smoothly; successfully; smooth; without a hitch |
| 父亲 | fùqin | father |
| 母亲 | mǔqīn | mother |
| 普通 | pǔtōng | ordinary; common; average |
| 管 | guǎn | to manage; to run |
| 算 | suàn | to calculate; to count |
| 当 | dāng | when; at the time of |
| 负责 | fùzé | to be in charge of; to be responsible for |
| 法律 | fǎlǜ | law |
English (for the teacher)
More than 2,500 years ago, at the city gate in the state of Zheng, someone said to a young man: “There's a man standing over by the east gate who looks worn out and lost, like a dog with no home.” The young man went back and told his teacher what he'd heard. The teacher, far from being angry, laughed happily: “I look like a dog with no home? That's right, that's right!”
The teacher was Confucius, and the young man was his student Zigong. Today Confucius is China's most famous teacher. But while he was alive, life did not go his way at all.
Confucius was born in 551 BC in the state of Lu, which is today's Shandong. His father died when he was three, and his mother brought him up in poverty. As a young man he did all kinds of ordinary jobs: he ran a storehouse and kept the accounts perfectly straight, and he kept cattle and sheep and raised plenty of them, and fat ones.
Later he became a high official in Lu, in charge of the law. But the reforms he pushed for failed, and in his fifties he left Lu.
For the next fourteen years he took his students from one state to another, hoping some ruler would take up his ideas. But not one ruler ever gave him real power. Once they got stuck on the road and couldn't even get food. The story of the “dog with no home” happened during these years.
When he was nearly seventy, Confucius returned to Lu, gave up official work and gave himself to teaching. He is said to have had three thousand students in all, seventy-two of them outstanding. The Analects says that anyone at all could become his student, as long as they brought a little dried meat as their fee. In those days most people who could study were nobles, so that was a remarkable thing.
Confucius died in 479 BC, in his seventies. He never wrote a book himself. After he died, his students wrote down the things he used to say and put them together into a book: the Analects. One example is “Review the old and you will learn something new”: go back over what you have already learned, and you will get something new out of it. Another is “What you don't want for yourself, don't do to others”: if you wouldn't like something done to you, don't do it to others.
While he was alive, Confucius went everywhere looking for people who would listen to him, and never found them. After he died, China listened to him for more than two thousand years.