Ancestor Worship Customs
01 · Historical Records
The siting and design layout of the entire village were strictly carried out according to the ancestral nine-palace, eight-trigram system, and more than 200 intact Ming and Qing dynasty ancient buildings are preserved in the village. In 1996, Zhuge Village was proclaimed a national key cultural relics protection unit by the State Council. The village was first built in the mid-Yuan dynasty and had reached a certain scale by the Ming dynasty. According to the Gaolong Zhuge Lineage Genealogy, the Jiajing Emperor of the Ming dynasty issued the Imperially Bestowed Regulations, Sacrificial Texts, and Offerings for the Zhongwu Marquis Temple in Nanyang, Henan, which stipulated that "the spring sacrifice be held on the next ding-day and the autumn sacrifice on the 28th day of the eighth lunar month"; from then on there were spring and autumn sacrifices. Beginning in the Ming dynasty, Zhuge Village has sacrificed to the ancestor Zhuge Liang according to this ritual. After the 1990s, the ancestor worship of the Zhuge descendants has been carried out completely in accordance with traditional procedures.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The ancestor worship of the Zhuge descendants is a folk activity in which the descendants of Zhuge Liang in Zhuge Village, Lanxi City, Zhejiang Province, worship their ancestors at regular times each year. Zhuge Village is one of the larger settlements of Zhuge Liang's descendants in China, and the village area reaches 2 square kilometers. Their ancestors came from the land of Shu to Zhejiang as traveling officials during the Later Tang period of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms, and the genealogy has been compiled sixteen times to this day. During the Wanli and Chongzhen reigns of the Ming dynasty, after the Chancellor's Ancestral Hall was expanded, the ancestor-worship ceremony became increasingly complete, with segments such as whole pigs and sheep, twin incense tables, three offerings of incense, three presentations of music, the chanting of the sacrificial text, the reading of exhortations, drum-and-wind music, and ceremonial escort; after the sacrifice a grand welcoming procession (yinghui) was also held. During the Tongzhi reign of the Qing dynasty, the Chancellor's Ancestral Hall was unfortunately burned down, and the ancestor-worship activities were interrupted for a time. In the Guangxu reign it was rebuilt, and large-scale ancestor-worship activities resumed. By 1930, the rebuilding of the central courtyard of the Chancellor's Ancestral Hall was completed, and the sacrificial rites became even more solemn. Zhuge Liang is a model of noble character and an exemplar of the national spirit, with far-reaching influence. The descendants in Zhuge Village sacrifice to their ancestors and vigorously promote the culture of filial piety, expressing the cultural sentiment of honoring the departed and remembering their origins; this not only plays a positive role in passing on fine family traditions and cultivating noble character, but the sacrificial activities themselves also contain multiple elements such as historiography, literature, fine arts, music, dance, costume design, food preparation, and scene arrangement, making them a pluralistic group folk activity rich in artistic appeal.
The spring rite fixed to a day in the cycle
The spring offering falls on a chosen day after the equinox, computed each year to keep clear of the ploughing season.
The autumn offering on the twenty-eighth
Fixed to the twenty-eighth of the eighth month, the autumn rite thanks heaven with the harvest in hand.
Three incense and three musical offerings
Pairwise boars and sheep, three burnings and three offerings, the prayer read and the counsel given in turn.
The reading of counsel to the clan
An elder reads the clan's counsel in an everyday voice; rules that fail on weekdays gain weight on this day.
The ceremonial escort after the sacrifice
After the sacrifice an escorted procession takes the emblems through the village, watched by all and sundry.
The burning and the rebuilding of the hall
When the hall burned the rite lapsed, and its restoration restored not only a building but the ceremony it carried.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The order of the ancestor-worship rites in Zhuge Village follows the rules fixed by the imperial edict of old, unchanged in use since the Ming dynasty. The imperially bestowed sacrificial texts and offerings set the spring sacrifice on the next ding-day and the autumn sacrifice on the 28th day of the eighth lunar month; Zhuge Village arranged its yearly calendar accordingly, and thereafter calculated the dates the same way year after year, never once shifting them. The scale of the rites rose and fell with the rebuilding and ruin of the ancestral hall: after the expansion of the Wanli and Chongzhen reigns the ceremonial segments were first complete; in the Tongzhi reign the hall burned and the rites stopped; the Guangxu-era rebuilding restarted them; and only with the completion of the central courtyard in 1930 did the procedures become fully regular again.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Ancestor Worship Customs · Ancestor Worship Customs · Ancestor Worship Customs · Ancestor Worship Customs · Ancestor Worship Customs · Ancestor Worship Customs · Ancestor Worship Customs · Ancestor Worship Customs · Ancestor Worship Customs.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Today, more than 4,000 descendants of Zhuge Liang live in the village. Zhuge Yi (from the official archives of the associated representative inheritor): Male, of Han ethnicity, born in September 1949, from Lanxi City, Zhejiang Province. He is the principal designer of the procedures of the Zhuge descendants' ancestor-worship activities and the performer of important roles in them. He is thoroughly familiar with every stage: the sacrificial procedures, role assignments, the making of offerings, the composition of sacrificial texts, recitation technique, the costume and behavioral norms of the rites, and the sequence of the post-sacrifice welcoming procession. He has long devoted himself to collecting ancient couplets and old sacrificial texts of Zhuge Village, gathering materials, writing the Zhuge Village Gazetteer, and carrying out practical and theoretical research on the ancestor worship of the Zhuge descendants. He has been invited to take part in a series of field projects and television documentary shoots concerning the Zhuge descendants' ancestor worship, invited to give promotional lectures and talks at home and abroad, and invited to participate in related ancestor-worship activities and cultural exchanges in various places. He is a representative inheritor of the ancestor worship custom (Zhuge descendants' ancestor worship), a project of the fifth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage.
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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