The Cultural Theme Park of Zhou Rites contains many bronze figurines that depict how people in the Zhou Dynasty observed etiquette. 

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The Zhou Dynasty (1046-256 BCE) played a critical role in the formation of Chinese culture. Epitomizing the culture of the Xia Dynasty (c.2070-c.1600 BCE) and Shang Dynasty (c.1600-1046 BCE), the Zhou Dynasty created unprecedented cultural prosperity in which Chinese culture during the following 3,000 years was deeply rooted.

Zhouyuan, in present-day Baoji, Shaanxi Province, is one of the most important cultural cradles of Zhou civilization. According to Historical Records by Sima Qian (145-c.90 BCE), Gu Gong Danfu, grandfather of King Wen (1152-1056 BCE) of the Zhou Dynasty, led the Zhou people to migrate and settle at the base of Mount Qi, where Zhouyuan was located.

The He Zun, an ancient Chinese ritual bronze vessel shaped like a zun (a bottle-like vessel that was narrower at the center), was unearthed at Zhouyuan in 1963. The vessel, made by a Zhou aristocrat whose name was He, recorded the construction of Luo, one of the capitals of Zhou Dynasty close to present-day Luoyang in Henan Province. It is the oldest artifact with the written characters referring to “Middle Kingdom”, which would become the characters now used for “China.”

A large number of inscriptions were found on the bronze wares unearthed at Zhouyuan, reflecting the formation process of the nation as well as the productivity and corresponding production methods at that time.

Duan Qingbo, a professor from School of Cultural Heritage at Northwest University, said Zhuanxu, one of Five Emperors in Chinese legendary history, was believed to have cut the previous communications between Heaven and the ordinary people by appointing special officials to monopolize that right. It was an epoch-making event in the course of Chinese cultural progress, Duan said. Chinese civilization was born at that point, and the nation was conceived by uniting various tribes, he added.

The kings of Shang and Zhou dynasties monopolized divine rights by practicing ancestor worship, Duan said. By directly communicating with Heaven through ancestor worship, the kings established themselves as the embodiment of the right to rule and divine right. The foreign tribes on the margins of the Shang and Zhou dynasties surrounded and protected the centrality of the kings.

Ownership is the fundamental system of a nation, which confirms, in the form of law, people’s ownerships over their means of production and subsistence. Laws in the form of written documents mark the advancement of a nation’s system.

The ritual bronze vessels with inscribed legal rules were, in essence, legal codes, said Wang Han, vice-president of the Northwest University of Political Science and Law. A legal ruling recorded on a bronze yi, a basin for washing hands, which was unearthed at Zhouyuan, was the oldest legal judgment excavated.

The notion of a Chinese people came into being as Chinese cultural theory and ideology were formulated. Zhou li, or the rites of Zhou, are the rules and etiquette of the Zhou Dynasty, said Zhang Qizhi, director of the Institute of Chinese Ideological Culture. They are also the main connotations of Zhou culture, Zhang said.

The rules of rites and music are crucial parts of the rites of Zhou. The rites are meant to regulate the external behaviors of the people while musical education is intended to nourish the souls. Zhou culture regulates people’s behavior with norms and rules while it nourishes their souls with literature and art. In this way, one can be educated to be a person with noble virtue. And that is how Zhou culture promoted the course of Chinese civilization and made China a land of courtesy.

The rules of rites in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046-771 BCE), especially the principle of nepotism, is, in essence, cronyism, which carries the function of allocating political power, Zhang said. Cronyism in the discursive context of modern society has been a notably bad philosophy, which even equals political decay or corruption. However, at the dawn of Chinese civilization, cronyism was a fundamental and legitimate principle for allocating political power and interests.
In this way, the tradition of integration of family and state, which lasted thousands of years in China, was guaranteed by state force.