He is also considered the "founder" of Chinese civilization. To this day, many of our living habits and cultural concepts still have the shadow of the Zhou people. Among them, the patriarchal system of the Zhou Dynasty had the most profound impact on the Chinese people.

2025/10/0922:00:37 history 1153

The Zhou Dynasty had a profound impact on the development of Chinese culture.

He is also considered the "founder" of Chinese civilization. To this day, many of our living habits and cultural concepts still have the shadow of the Zhou people.

Among them, the patriarchal system of the Zhou Dynasty had the most profound impact on the Chinese people.

To this day, family inheritance is still one of the most distinctive features of Chinese culture.

Under the influence of the family model, the ancients paid special attention to fertility. In the Zhou Dynasty there were many child-seeking rituals.

As a dynasty established under a patriarchal system, the Zhou Dynasty has always been the focus of people's attention on the continuation of the family. This can be seen from some chapters in " Book of Songs ".

▲ A gathering of ancient people in the Zhou Dynasty

For example, in "Zhounan·Katydid", the katydid with many wings is used to metaphorically represent the large number of descendants, and this ballad is used to bless others:

The katydid has feathers and is so beautiful. The descendants of Yi'er are vibrating.
The katydid feathers are dying. Descendants of Yier. Ropey.
Katydid feathers, bowing to each other. The descendants of Yier are hibernating.

In addition to folk poetry, thinkers at that time also attached great importance to the continuation of descendants.

For example, Confucius believed that the three stages of social development are "commons, wealth, and education" , among which shuo refers to a large population.

Confucius believed that a prosperous population was the key to the implementation of the patriarchal system and the basis for social development.

▲ Confucius

who inherited the teachings of Confucius Mencius further emphasized the importance of "survival of heirs" .

The well-known "There are three types of unfilial piety, the greatest is not having offspring" was proposed by him. This view became the Chinese people's living standards for more than two thousand years, and also had great influence in the Zhou Dynasty.

Even Taoist Zhuangzi wrote in his article "Heaven and Earth":

Longevity, wealth, and many men are what people want.

From this we can also see that the people of the Zhou Dynasty longed for and valued heirs.

The importance that the ancients attached to heirs was not only influenced by the patriarchal system, but also related to the level of economic development at that time.

During the Zhou Dynasty, the vast majority of people in our country relied on the small-scale farmer economy. In an era when farm tools and farming technology were underdeveloped, labor was the guarantee of food production, and childbearing became a key means of increasing labor.

▲Working farmers

But in ancient times, due to the patriarchal system's suppression of women's social status, there was a very serious preference for boys over girls in the Zhou Dynasty.

The emergence of this idea is not only that women cannot participate in sacrifices and inherit titles, it is also related to the fact that women must help their husband's family in labor after they get married. From birth, girls are not regarded as future labor forces by their families, so they do not receive much attention.

Although the patriarchal ideology of the Zhou Dynasty was caused by the limitations of cultural and economic development, it still had a certain negative impact on the progress of Chinese civilization. Some of the practices of the ancients still need to be criticized.

Zhou people attach great importance to fertility, which is also reflected in their wedding arrangements.

Nowadays, weddings more often represent love, but in ancient China, most weddings represented the continuation of family history.

Therefore, begging for a child has become the main theme throughout the wedding process.

In the first step of weddings in the Zhou Dynasty, "asking for names" , there is a key point "Do not marry if you have the same surname" .

This practice is now generally considered to be a ban set by the ancients to prevent close relatives from marrying. However, we know that it was very common for cousins to marry in ancient times, so the ancients actually had other purposes for doing this.

▲ " Hundred Family Surnames " book and shadow

In "Zuo Zhuan·Twenty-Three Years of Duke Xi", there is a record of "men and women have the same surname, and their birth is not Fan".

means: If a man and a woman with the same surname get married, the number of their children will be very small.

This was an unacceptable thing at the time. It can be seen that from the first step of the engagement, seeking a child became the main theme of the entire process.

After the name inquiry is over, the parents of both parties will take the couple's birth date to the ancestral temple for divination. One of the key items in the divination is whether the couple will be full of descendants after they get married.

If the divination result is not good, then this marriage will also come to an end.

After the marriage is decided, there is also a special ceremony arranged for the child on the wedding day.

For example, when welcoming a bride, the groom must wear sandals "Gewei" made of Ge, and the weight of the shoes must be five taels.

▲ Geqi

As for the meaning of this weight, we might as well start with " Shuowen " to study.

"Shuowen" explains "five" as: "From two, yin and yang meet in heaven and earth at noon."

The intersection of yin and yang represented the union of men and women in ancient times, and the character "two" was considered to be the overlapping shape of husband and wife, which gave "five" a subtle symbol of fertility.

At the same time, in the ancient witchcraft cultural system, shoes also represent the female body, which gives "Ge Wei Wuliang" the meaning of "successor to future generations" . This was also the first child-seeking ceremony at the wedding of the Zhou Dynasty.

The second ceremony is called "Sharing Prison Ceremony" .

After the groom brings the bride home, he must bow to the bride and invite her in. After entering, the two of them must eat a sacrificial meal together and then rinse their mouths with wine, which is "合卺" .

▲Immature gourd

The hip flask used during the marriage ceremony is generally in the shape of a gourd. Since the enlarged belly of the gourd resembles the belly of a pregnant woman, it has been a symbol of fertility since ancient times.

The marriage ceremony in the Gonglao ceremony is actually an obscure activity of seeking a child.

On the day after the wedding, the bride also needs to visit the groom's parents with gifts, and these gifts are also very meaningful.

Two of the indispensable items are jujubes and chestnuts, which means "early establishment of children" and also expresses the elders' expectations for their grandchildren.

▲ Today’s clan ancestral temple

Three months after the wedding, the newlyweds have to go to the groom’s ancestral temple to perform sacrifices to pray for the blessings of their ancestors.

Among the contents of prayer, having children is also a very important aspect.

From this we can see that many processes in wedding ceremonies in the Zhou Dynasty were related to childbirth, which shows that the people at that time attached great importance to the prosperity of the population. Some of these customs have been spread to this day in some areas of our country.

In the Zhou Dynasty, if a couple did not have children for a long time after getting married, not only would they have to endure criticism from people around them, but the marriage would also most likely come to an end.

Because "having no offspring" was the most commonly used reason for divorcing a wife at that time.

For this reason, couples who have had no children for a long time have to try their best to find children. After Buddhism was introduced to China , the most common way for the ancients was to worship Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy.

But in the Zhou Dynasty, Buddhism had not yet been introduced into our country, and the ancient people's sacrificial methods were completely different from those of later generations.

▲ The first way to send children to Guanyin statue

at that time was to worship the gods, and this god in charge of pregnancy and childbirth was called "高禖".

Among them, "gao" refers to respectable status, and the word "禜" is taken from "蜜". The word "蜜" is explained in "Shuowen" as "蜜肖ye" , which means the appearance of pregnant women. Therefore, Gaozi is the object for the ancients to pray for children.

As a god, the image of Gao Le is not fixed in the Zhou Dynasty. Many people will worship their ancestors as Gao Le, and some people regard the mythical human ancestors such as Fuxi and Nuwa as Gao Le.

▲Fuxi and Nuwa

In addition to the common people, Emperor Zhou would also bring his concubines to worship Gaozi every spring. This is mainly because the ancients regarded the spring of sowing as the starting point of all life.

Sacrificing sacrifices to Gaozi at this time also reflects people's strong desire to increase the population at that time.

In addition to offering sacrifices to Gaozi, the ancients also used witchcraft to pray for children.

Since some vassal states in the Zhou Dynasty were relatively resistant to witchcraft, compared with offering sacrifices to Gaozi, the method of praying for children through witchcraft only existed in a small number of areas.

Among them, Chen Guo is the most representative.

▲ Today’s Witchcraft Ritual

According to the records of "Mao Shi Zhengyi", Chen Guogong was married at that time and married Da Ji as his wife. However, Da Ji was not pregnant for a long time after the marriage, and Chen Guogong felt very anxious about this.

So he found a team of wizards and danced around Daji. It didn't take long for Daji to be pregnant with the child.

In addition to praying to gods, people in the Zhou Dynasty also had the custom of praying to spiritual animals.

Among the many spiritual beasts, Qilin , known as the "Four Spirits", has become the mascot for giving birth to children.

Since the Zhou Dynasty, people have had the custom of begging for children from Qilin, and those talented children will be called "Qilin children" . This can also be seen from the people's love and recognition of Qilin at that time.

▲ The picture of Qilin sending a child

In "The Book of Songs·Zhou Nan·Lin Zhi Zhi", Qilin is used as a metaphor for the son:

Lin Zhi Zhi , Zhen Zhen Zhi Zhi, Yu Lin Xi.
Lin Zhiding, Zhenzhen Gong's surname, Yu Linxi.
Lin's horn revitalizes the public family and makes Lin Xi come.

Therefore, in many places, people will make Kirin ornaments to pray for children.

Once someone says where they saw a unicorn, those couples who have been childless for many years will immediately go there to visit, hoping that the unicorn can bring them a "good pregnancy."

▲ The image of the spiritual beast Qilin

People in the Zhou Dynasty regarded the inheritance of the family line as very important. To a certain extent, it even surpassed the relationship between husband and wife and became the most important criterion for evaluating marriage.

In this atmosphere, ancient couples became vassals of the clan, which was very detrimental to the establishment of their relationship.

Moreover, under the concept of fertility in the Zhou Dynasty, the value of women was greatly reduced. Women of the tribe became a "burden" in the eyes of the tribe, while married women were regarded as fertility tools.

This has greatly harmed the dignity and status of women, and even threatened the lives of some women.

In the feudal dynasties after the Zhou Dynasty, the patriarchal system was still an important means for rulers to maintain stability at the grassroots level.

This has also resulted in the status of women in our country having been relatively low throughout thousands of years of history.

▲ Ancient Weddings

Moreover, people do not pay much attention to the relationship between husband and wife in marriage, which has caused considerable harm to the development and progress of our country's culture.

But at the same time, this concept of attaching importance to fertility has also formed a unique family culture in our country.

The Chinese people's emphasis on and maintenance of family ties is also one of the advantages of our country's traditional culture.

Therefore, we must strive to "remove the dross and select the essence" from traditional concepts and cultural customs. While retaining the characteristics of traditional culture, we must remove the dross and help the Chinese nation take off again.