Korean Huajiali
01 · Historical Records
The Korean ethnic group has since ancient times regarded respect for the elderly as an important principle in family and even in social life. The Huajia ceremony (the 60th-birthday rite) is an important life-cycle custom of the Korean ethnic group, held for an elder who reaches the age of 60. It evolved out of the customs of birthday celebration and respect for the aged, taking shape between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries, and is mainly transmitted in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture and Korean ethnic settlements across the three provinces of Northeast China. On the day a Korean ethnic elder turns 60, the children lay out a banquet and invite relatives, friends and neighbors to gather together, expressing gratitude for their parents' upbringing. The Huajia ceremony of the Korean ethnic group carries forward the national virtue of honoring the aged. It deepens the bonds between father and son, grandparent and grandchild, and daughter-in-law and parents-in-law, helping to promote healthy social customs and accelerate the building of a harmonious society.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Offering longevity wishes is the basic rite of the Huajia ceremony. The banquet table is laden with sweets, fish and meat, cakes and alcoholic drinks. The 60-year-old elder sits at the center of the seat of honor, with men on the left and women on the right, receiving the good wishes of the assembled guests together with peers among relatives, friends and neighbors. As the rite begins, those offering wishes come forward in order — children by seniority, relatives and friends by closeness of relation — toasting, kowtowing, presenting poems and prayers, or singing and dancing to wish the elder health and long life. The whole ceremony is filled with humane care and a warm, harmonious atmosphere.
The fixed items on the table
Sweets, fish and meat, cakes and wine make up the standing set, arranged as much for propriety as for appetite.
Peers seated as fellow recipients
Peers of the celebrant's generation sit with him, widening a family occasion into a gathering for the whole village.
Grown out of a birthday rite
What began as a birthday wish hardened into a rite fixed to the sixtieth year, which is why it weighs so much.
Wine urged between the speeches
Speeches chase one another and the cup goes round with them, until song loosens the formality of the rite.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture is the principal region where the Huajia ceremony is transmitted; in the Korean ethnic villages of its counties and cities, the day an elder turns 60 is almost universally treated as a major occasion. In Yanbian the ceremony is usually organized by senior peers of the same generation within the clan: how many banquet tables to lay, in what order the visitors are received, and how many times the children kowtow all follow locally accepted rules. When one household's elder is the first to pass 60, peers of the same generation usually notify one another. The banquet of honor is based on sweets, fish and meat, cakes and alcoholic drinks; the essential items are broadly the same from village to village, as are the seating order and the sequence of toasts.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Korean Huajiali · Korean Huajiali.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
After the Huajia ceremony spread to Yanbian, it became a common order of rites shared by Korean ethnic communities everywhere. Members of the ethnic group make their year-round living through wage labor and trade, and their dwellings shift with their line of work, so it is hard to gather everyone on ordinary days; when an elder turns 60, the relatives and neighbors who are rarely assembled through the year are called together in one place, and their scattering in different directions afterward only makes the occasion more precious. In Korean ethnic thinking, the age of sixty is a threshold: once crossed, one rises from the junior generation to the generation that receives respect. The Huajia ceremony fixes this threshold with wine, with words, and with song and dance, giving the transfer of standing a day that can be pointed to as evidence.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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