the town was quiet and peaceful and we spent the night in a small room off one of the several courtyards that made up the confucian complex , a modest but well-preserved compound that had been damaged by the red guards in the sixties and then restored by government order after 1976 to be used as a tourist site for westerners who were once again being allowed to visit the land of the dragon , that supreme symbol of the emperor and the source of life-giving rain .