[Wenlan Forum] Family Rituals in Traditional Chinese Society

[Wenlan Forum] Family Rituals in Traditional Chinese Society   Wenlan Forum (894th issue)

Theme: Family Rituals in Traditional Chinese Society

Lecturer: Lu Minzhen, professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of History,  Zhejiang University

Host: Zhejiang Library  

Time: 9: 30, August 11, 2018 (Saturday)

Venue: Wenlan Lecture Hall, first floor of Zhejiang Library

Introduction of the lecturer:

Lu Minzhen, professor and doctoral supervisor of the Department of History, Zhejiang University, visiting scholar and visiting professor of Harvard University, Princeton University, and Kiel University. Professor Lu is mainly engaged in the study of ancient Chinese history. She has published multiple monographs and translation works as well as many papers on Chinese and foreign journals including Historical Research. She has undertaken several projects including the National Social Science Fund Project, the Philosophy and Social Science Project of Chinese Ministry of Education, and the Philosophy and Social Science Program of Zhejiang Province.

Brief introduction of the lecture:

Professor Lu will share with us about the family ritual culture in traditional Chinese society. Influenced by the concepts of “ruling the family by courtesy, educating the family by courtesy, and admonishing the family by courtesy”, scholar-officials developed a large number of family rituals, family instructions, and family precepts to maintain the family order and regulate the daily behaviors of family members. Since Ming and Qing dynasties, there have been a large number of family ritual texts, whose distribution was often in direct proportion to the number of scholars in a place. During this period, family ritual texts written by individuals not only became an important source of state ritual books, but also a behavior model and a general principle for local officials to transform social traditions.