Ancestor Worship in China

The cult of the ancestors was the foundation of the religious life of the Chinese household and the most fundamental of the popular religious practices of imperial China. Every household kept tablets of the recent ancestors on the family altar; every lineage maintained a hall where the tablets of more distant ancestors received offerings at the major festivals. The cult was, in the Confucian view, the foundation of filial piety (xiao), the cardinal Confucian virtue, and the household ritual of offering food, wine, and incense at the family altar was the most basic religious act of Chinese life. The practice continued in essentially unchanged form from the earliest historical period down to the twentieth century, and it remains, in modified form, a living practice in contemporary China. The broader context is set by the overview of folk religion and practice, and the state cult of the imperial ancestors was the imperial version of the household cult.

The Religious Framework

The religious framework of ancestor worship in China was the belief that the dead continued to exist in another realm, that they retained an interest in the affairs of the living, and that they could influence the fortunes of the descendants. The regular offerings of food, wine, and incense at the family altar were a way of maintaining the proper relations between the living and the dead.

The Chinese religious tradition distinguished between the ancestors who had received proper burial and regular offerings, and the ghosts (gui) who had not. The properly cared-for ancestors were believed to be benevolent; the improperly cared-for dead were believed to be malevolent.

The Confucian ethical framework gave the ancestor cult its specific form. Filial piety (xiao) was the cardinal Confucian virtue, and the practice of ancestor worship was the ritual expression of filial piety. The Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing) made the case in its opening line: “Filial piety is the root of virtue, and the stem from which all moral teaching grows.” The care of the dead is the final and most enduring expression of filial piety.

The Household Cult

The household cult of the ancestors centered on the family altar (shen zhu), placed in the central room of the house. The tablets of the ancestors — small wooden plaques inscribed with the name and title of the deceased — were placed on the altar, along with images of the household gods and an incense burner.

The household cult was the responsibility of the head of the household, who performed the regular offerings on behalf of the family. The most important occasions were the new year, the major festivals, the birthdays and death anniversaries of the ancestors, and the occasions of important family events. On each of these occasions, the head of the household would arrange the offerings on the family altar, and would bow or kneel before the altar in a brief ritual.

The tablets themselves were the focus of the cult. The most important was the “soul tablet” (shen zhu) of the most recently deceased ancestor, inscribed with the name, the dates of birth and death, and the titles of the deceased. The tablet was believed to be the dwelling place of the spirit of the ancestor. The tablet was kept in a clean and honored place, it was not moved without proper ritual, and it was eventually buried or burned when the next generation replaced it on the altar.

The Lineage Cult

The lineage cult of the ancestors was a larger and more public version of the household cult. Every lineage maintained an ancestral hall (ci tang), where the tablets of the more distant ancestors of the lineage received offerings at the major festivals. The ancestral hall was the site of the lineage’s corporate ritual life: the announcement of births, the recording of deaths, the meeting of the lineage elders, and the celebration of the lineage’s corporate identity.

The lineage ancestral hall was a regularized institution in much of southeastern China from the Song onwards, especially in the provinces of Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi, and Anhui. The hall was a building of considerable architectural distinction, often the largest structure in the village, with a central hall for the tablets of the founders of the lineage, side halls for the tablets of the more distant ancestors, and a courtyard for the gatherings of the lineage.

The lineage cult centered on the great festivals of the ritual year, especially the Qingming and the winter solstice. The Qingming visit to the ancestral graves was a major event: the graves were cleaned, the tomb mounds were swept, and offerings of food, wine, and incense were made at each grave. The winter solstice gathering at the ancestral hall was the most important corporate ritual of the year: the tablets of the ancestors were honored, the lineage elders addressed the assembled members, and a formal record of the year’s births, deaths, and marriages was entered in the lineage register.

The Festivals of Ancestor Worship

Two of the most important festivals of the Chinese ritual year were the principal festivals of the ancestor cult. The Qingming Festival, on the third day of the third lunar month, was the time of the spring visit to the ancestral graves. The Cold Food Festival, traditionally the day before Qingming, was associated with the story of the loyal minister Jie Zhitui. The two festivals were eventually merged in the late medieval period, and the Qingming came to be the principal festival of the spring ancestor cult. The Qingming has been continuously observed for more than two thousand years, and it remains one of the most important festivals of contemporary China.

The winter solstice (Dongzhi), in the eleventh month of the lunar year, was the second great festival of the ancestor cult. The winter solstice was, with the summer solstice, the most important occasion of the state cult, and it was the occasion of the great family gathering and the eating of dumplings in the north and rice balls in the south.

A third festival was the Hungry Ghost Festival (Zhongyuan jie) on the fifteenth day of the seventh month. The Hungry Ghost Festival was the time when the spirits of the dead who had no descendants to care for them were believed to be released from the underworld to wander the world of the living. Buddhist and Daoist priests performed rituals of salvation for the wandering ghosts.

The Link to Confucian Filial Piety

The link between ancestor worship and Confucian filial piety was the foundation of the ethical status of the practice. Filial piety was a matter of caring for the parents in death, of maintaining the proper relations between the living and the dead, and of ensuring the continuing welfare of the family across the generations. The ancestor cult was the ritual expression of the basic Confucian commitment to the continuity of the family.

The Confucian tradition also gave the ancestor cult its ethical interpretation. The care of the ancestors was a moral education: the regular offerings at the family altar taught the children the proper respect for the elders and the proper sense of the continuity of the family. The emperor performed the sacrifices at the imperial ancestral temple, and the state cult of the imperial ancestors was a magnified version of the household cult.

The link between ancestor worship and Confucian filial piety was deeply contested in the late imperial period. The Buddhist and Daoist critiques argued that the ancestor cult was a form of attachment that prevented the proper cultivation of the mind; the late Qing reformers argued that it was a form of superstition; the May Fourth intellectuals argued that it was a form of feudalism. The practice survived all of these critiques, and it remains a central feature of the religious life of contemporary China.