Zou

The small state neighbouring Confucius' Lu where Mencius was born, and where his mother is said to have moved house three times to find him better company.

Zou was a minor state in what is now southern Shandong, close enough to Lu that Mencius could study in the tradition Confucius left behind. The story every Chinese schoolchild learns is about his mother: they lived near a cemetery and he played at funerals, near a market and he played at trading, and only when they moved beside a school did she stay. It is a parable about environment rather than a biography, which is fitting for a man who argued that goodness needs the right conditions to grow.