Ancestor Worship Customs
01 · Historical Records
The Great Locust Tree migration of Hongtong, Shanxi, began in the era of the Song court's move to the south and ended in the mid-to-late Qing Dynasty, with its peak in the more than fifty years between the early Hongwu era and the 15th year of the Yongle era of the Ming Dynasty. Frequent warfare at the end of the Yuan and the beginning of the Ming left the Central Plains with vast lands and a sparse population, but Shanxi was not seriously affected by the upheaval of dynastic change and still retained a large population. Accordingly, in the early Ming Dynasty the court organized a total of 18 migrations out of Shanxi over a span of fifty years; among them, the migrants from Pingyang Prefecture were the most numerous, and the central assembly point for the migrants was beneath the Great Locust Tree outside Guangji Temple in the former Hongtong County. The Great Locust Tree migration of Hongtong, Shanxi, constituted the largest migration movement in Chinese history: it directly involved 1,230 surnames and multiple ethnic groups including Han, Hui, and Mongol, and the migrants spread to 498 counties (and county-level cities) in 18 provinces (and municipalities) across the country. Since 1991, the Hongtong County government, heeding popular sentiment and building on centuries of folk ancestor-worship activities while absorbing a great body of folk ritual prescriptions, has held the "Root-Seeking Ancestor Worship Festival" every year from April 1 to April 10, transforming the long-standing Great Locust Tree ancestor-worship custom into a grand folk event jointly offered by officials and the people, which has drawn an enthusiastic response from descendants of the migrants at home and abroad.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Today, descendants of the Great Locust Tree migrants are spread across the entire globe. For several hundred years, they have used every opportunity to return and worship their ancestors beneath the Great Locust Tree, giving rise to a rich body of migration legends and a long ancestor-worship tradition; the Great Locust Tree has thereby become a symbol of the Chinese people's search for their roots and ancestors. The Great Locust Tree ancestor-worship custom is a vivid reflection of the Chinese nation's historical condition of common roots and common ancestry; it strengthens the sense of cultural identity of overseas compatriots, encourages Chinese people around the world to live in harmony, and promotes their joining hands to create a better future under the guidance of traditional Chinese culture.
The root-seeking festival opened on the first
From the first to the tenth of the fourth lunar month, descendants register by surname and approach the altar in turn.
Setting out the incense before Guangji Temple
The rite opens with tables laid in surname order; absent descendants are represented by a stand-in.
The small grave rites of each branch
Beyond the great gathering, each branch keeps its own grave-side offerings on Qingming.
Dough offerings and the ritual vessels
Dough fruit, incense and candles are prepared beforehand, and the set order of vessels and burning is inherited.
From spoken surnames to a public festival
A private recognition of shared descent is staged in public, where separate branches meet as one line.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Ancestor worship in the Hongtong area is not limited to the Great Locust Tree alone; villages along both banks of the Fen River, where descendants of the migrants live in concentration, almost all have root-seeking rites, differing only in scale and venue. Spontaneous folk grave-sweeping and offerings mostly take place around Qingming, with each family preparing fruit and dishes to burn incense and pour libations at its own branch's ancestral graves; the county-run Root-Seeking Ancestor Worship Festival moves the scene to the altar outside Guangji Temple, where registered descendants line up and pay homage grouped by surname, running from the first to the tenth day of the fourth lunar month. Scattered families of the same surname elsewhere are usually led by clan elders bringing their descendants along; overseas descendants mostly entrust others to bring back incense and offerings, and some simply bow in reverence from afar before the altar — one set of ritual observances performed at home, performed away, and performed again upon return, carried on year after year in this way.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
From the perspective of migration, what the Great Locust Tree ancestor worship preserves is a bloodline thread that has already scattered. Migration caused the members of a single village to settle one after another across a dozen-odd provinces; in former times the clan was maintained by genealogies and ancestral halls, but once beyond Hongtong only orally transmitted surnames and stories of the ancestors remained, so ancestor worship became their once-a-year opportunity to reconnect themselves to the source. Whether to worship or not, and whether early or late, is a matter repeatedly enjoined by elders in many families; if a family's line of incense offerings is broken, the clan will know of it. These invisible rules both constrain the individual and enable numerous mutually unacquainted descendants to acknowledge that they spring from a single line — the descendants overseas are especially dependent on this thread.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Liu Yixia 05-3036
- Zhuge Yi 05-3037
- Chen Dunhe 05-3038
- Fan Zhongyi
- Qu Bilaji
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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