Taihaofuxi Memorial Ceremony

01 · Historical Records

Fuxi is the founder of the civilization of the Chinese nation. He taught the people fishing and hunting, made tools, promoted agriculture, instituted marriage, rectified surnames, created writing, and expounded the Eight Trigrams. With the light of civilization he guided people out of the chaos of primeval ignorance and ended the primitive mode of life. Ceremonial specifications and content differed in each historical period. The rite reached its height in the Ming dynasty, when the imperial court issued sacrificial texts, the Tailao standard (the highest grade of sacrifice, using an ox, a sheep, and a pig) was adopted, and two ceremonies were held each year, each lasting three days — grand and solemn. In the Qing dynasty the sacrificial procedures were simplified and the rites became more concise. Since 2005 the annual ceremony has been hosted by the Gansu provincial government. Every year from the second day of the second lunar month to the third day of the third lunar month, a ceremony of ancestor worship and incense offering is held at the Taihao Mausoleum. As for the origin of the temple fair, according to the book A Survey of the Chenzhou Taihao Mausoleum Temple Fair, it should have begun after the reign of Zhaozong.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Tianshui City in Gansu Province is one of the cradles of ancient Chinese culture and also the birthplace of Fuxi, the primordial ancestor of human civilization. Fuxi's merit in opening up the heavens and illuminating the Way laid the foundation for the flourishing of Chinese civilization over several thousand years. To commemorate and display Fuxi's achievements, later generations built the Fuxi Temple and conducted annual sacrificial activities. The sacrificial activities at the Tianshui Fuxi Temple began in the nineteenth year of the Chenghua reign of the Ming dynasty (1483) and have continued to this day. During the Republican period the rites became even simpler, with the folk sacrificial organization Shangyuan Hui presiding over the sacrifices. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Qing-dynasty sacrificial specifications were gradually restored. The dates of the sacrifice were changed to the fifteenth through the seventeenth day of the first lunar month — one ceremony over three days: the first day a welcoming rite, the second a grand ceremony, and the third a sending-off rite. The sacrificial activities at the Fuxi Temple have developed the following basic characteristics: 1. a dependence on folk custom, formed in conjunction with the emergence and development of folk activities; 2. a relatively fixed procedural character that varies according to historical period; 3. a combination of the region's folk sacrificial tradition with the ritual propriety of the Son of Heaven; 4. vigorous promotion of dragon culture and Fuxi culture in the content of the sacrifices; 5. the character of a mass cultural activity. In recent years the Gansu provincial Party committee and provincial government have attached great importance to the Fuxi sacrificial activities. The Fuxi sacrificial ceremony has played a positive role in strengthening the cohesion of the Chinese nation and building a harmonious society. The mausoleum and temple of Taihao Fuxi stand 1.5 kilometers north of the county town of Huaiyang, Henan Province. As the mausoleum and temple of the "cultural ancestor" of the Chinese nation, it is known as the "First Mausoleum under Heaven". A temple fair is also held during the sacrificial ceremony, lasting more than a month; the liveliest period, however, is the ten days from the tenth to the twentieth day of the second lunar month, and the three days from the fourteenth to the sixteenth day can be called the climax of the ceremony. Crowds throng the fair shoulder to shoulder, with daily attendance reaching more than 200,000 people. The influence of the temple fair extends beyond Henan to dozens of counties (and cities) in provinces such as Anhui, Shandong, and Hebei. The fairground covers an area of roughly one square kilometer; all trades and occupations are on display, with ancestor worship as the core content. The clay toys sold at the fair, such as "nini dogs" and "tigers", have been praised by some Chinese and foreign experts and scholars as "true totems" and "living fossils". In the long course of historical evolution, the working people transformed their wishes, ideals, and aesthetic interests into visible and tangible cultural forms integrated into the temple fair activities, creating specific rituals. The sacrificial and popular music-and-dance forms it encompasses, the "Shougong" narrative singing with its meaning of exhorting people to goodness, and the folk fine arts and crafts that preserve the consciousness of humanity's childhood — these give the Ancestor's Temple Fair its profound cultural connotations and rich, colorful forms of expression.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Fuxi sacrificial ceremony in Tianshui began in the nineteenth year of the Chenghua reign of the Ming dynasty and has continued to this day. During the Republican period it became even simpler, with the folk sacrificial organization Shangyuan Hui presiding over the sacrifices; after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Qing-dynasty specifications were gradually restored and the dates of the sacrifice were changed to the fifteenth through the seventeenth day of the first lunar month. The Shangyuan Hui is still the actual organizer of the ceremony to this day. Yang Tingjie improved its mode of operation so that this folk organization could adapt to the needs of social development; building on the ritual procedures inherited since the Qing dynasty, he also added content relevant to modern society to the sacrificial texts. The Fuxi Temple sacrifices have developed five characteristics: dependence on folk custom, a procedural character relatively fixed according to historical period, the combination of the region's folk sacrificial tradition with the ritual propriety of the Son of Heaven, vigorous promotion of dragon culture and Fuxi culture, and the character of a mass cultural activity. This set of characteristics is still in use today.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Taihaofuxi Memorial Ceremony · Taihaofuxi Memorial Ceremony.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

In recent years, many experts and scholars from China and abroad have come to the temple fair to explore antiquity and study the Eastern culture of ancient China. Compatriots from Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan have returned to the mainland to visit and take part in the Taihao Mausoleum ceremony, seeking their roots and inquiring after their ancestors as a way of showing that they have not forgotten their forebears or that they are descendants of the dragon. Yang Tingjie (as recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): He improved the mode of operation of the Shangyuan Hui, and with the leadership and assistance of the government and management bodies, enabled this folk organization to adapt to the needs of social development. He participated in the restoration of the dragon-horse statue at the Fuxi Temple and in replicating the Hetu and Luoshu millstones and the statue of Fuxi. Building on the ritual procedures inherited since the Qing dynasty, he added content relevant to modern society to the sacrificial texts. The systematically presented ritual process has been studied and drawn upon by other folk belief ceremonies. He has directly taught six disciples, and has used folk Fuxi sacrificial activities to carry out the transmission and teaching of sacrificial rites. Male, of the Han nationality, born in July 1937, died in January 2020, a native of Tianshui City, Gansu Province. Representative inheritor of the Taihao Fuxi Sacrificial Ceremony, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item of the fifth batch.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Yang Tingjie 05-2986

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Taihaofuxi Memorial Ceremony (Tianshui, Gansu) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Yang Tingjie · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗