Confucius Memorial Ceremony

The Confucius Memorial Ceremony is the grand temple music-and-dance for the sacrifice to Confucius held in Qufu, also called the Ding-sacrifice dance or the Dacheng dance, a composite art form joining music, song, dance and rite. The tradition reaches back to 478 BCE, when Duke Ai of Lu converted the Master's old house into a shrine the year after his death; it grew through the dynasties and reached full regulation under the Ming and Qing. In 2006 the ceremony entered the first national ICH list under folklore.

The rite is held before the Dacheng Hall of the Qufu Temple of Confucius on the Master's birthday (28 September) and at the spring and autumn Ding sacrifices, led by heralds and attendants through stages of welcoming the spirit, offering silk, the first, second and final libations, sharing the blessing and flesh, removing the viands and seeing off the spirit, accompanied by bianzhong and bianqing chimes and the eight-row dance, the music stately and the dance solemn.

The ceremony is a living embodiment of Confucian ritual-and-music culture, carrying more than twenty-five hundred years of honouring teachers and virtue, and holds real value for the study of Chinese rite, court music and temple dance, as well as being a cultural bond linking Confucian communities among Chinese across the world.

The ceremony is held before the Dacheng Hall of the Temple of Confucius in Qufu, open to observers around the Master's birthday.