  The properties of nuclear matter and finite nuclei are studied within the
quark mean field (QMF) model by taking the effects of pion and gluon into
account at the quark level. The nucleon is described as the combination of
three constituent quarks confined by a harmonic oscillator potential. To
satisfy the spirit of QCD theory, the contributions of pion and gluon on the
nucleon structure are treated in second-order perturbation theory. For the
nuclear many-body system, nucleons interact with each other by exchanging
mesons between quarks. With different constituent quark mass, $m_q$, we
determine three parameter sets about the coupling constants between mesons and
quarks, named as QMF-NK1, QMF-NK2, and QMF-NK3 by fitting the ground-state
properties of several closed-shell nuclei. It is found that all of the three
parameter sets can give satisfactory description on properties of nuclear
matter and finite nuclei, meanwhile they can also predict the larger neutron
star mass around $2.3M_\odot$ without the hyperon degrees of freedom.
