Dishu Hu
I am trying to use my project "Altar" to restore a more realistic altar for ancestor worship ritual purpose in traditional China.Even today, people in China take ancestor worship rituals very seriously. It is because the word "country" in Chinese culture is made of two separate words, they are "nation" and "family". A country is made of countless families, when all those families are put together, they form a country, therefore the relationship between nation and families are inseparable and families are important to Chinese people. The worship ritual for the ancestors in the family are naturally important in Chinese people's minds, the festival "Ching Ming" particularly for that purpose is regarded as one of the four major festivals to Chinese people.
In traditional China, established families sharing the same family names live together in their own villages. The architecture positioned in the centre of the village is always of a bigger scale with a different layout. That is not for people to live in, that is for ancestor worship rituals, it is called the "ancestral hall". In all major festivals and when there is major events such as wedding, people in the village would hold worship rituals there. To accommodate so many people in the same venue for important events, ancestral halls are always much bigger than the other houses in the village, and the architecture and the decoration are always more grand. That proves how important the culture of ancestor worship rituals are to Chinese people.
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