For more than two thousand years, Confucius has been a fundamental part of China's history. Yet despite this fame, Confucius the man has been elusive, and what could be called a definitive biography does not exist. In this book, the scholar and writer Annping Chin has negotiated the reconstructions, guess-work and numerous Chinese texts in order to establish an absorbing and original account of the thinker's life and legacy. It shows how Confucius lived and thought, his habits and inclinations, his relation to his contemporaries, his work as a teacher and as a counsellor, his worries about the world and the generations to come.In this book, Chin brings the historical Confucius within reach so that he can lead us into his idea of the moral and to his teachings on family and politics, culture and learning. Confucius is the culmination of years of research, and an important contribution to biography and Chinese history.