His Birth Is The Subject Of An Origin Story
Kong He, the father of Confucius, married a 17-year-old girl from the neighborhood Yan family when he was 60 years old in the hopes of having a healthy male heir after his first wife had given birth to 9 girls. Kong looked to one of his neighbors' adolescent daughters as potential brides. None of the daughters wanted to marry an "old man," so they left it up to their father to make the marriage arrangements. Yan Zhengzai was the chosen young lady.
The couple withdrew to a nearby sacred mountain after the wedding in the hopes that being in such a venerated and spiritual location would aid in conception. In 551 BC, Confucius was born.
According to a well-known tradition, Confucius' mother was visited by a qilin, a weird mythical being with the head of a dragon, the scales of a snake, and the body of a deer, when she was pregnant. According to legend, the qilin unveiled a jade tablet that predicted the unborn child would become a renowned sage in the future.
