China is renowned as “A Nation of Rites”, as it enjoys deep and profound rite culture. The rites constitute the cultural foundation of a township society and a traditional national country. Research Institute for Ancient Books of Zhejiang University three years ago proposed the project of “Chinese Rites”, which aimed to reconstruct Chinese rites and practice core values in contemporary China by constructing a database of literature on Chinese rites. Professor Guan Changlong, Director of the Institute said, “The Book is quite necessary in surging Chinese studies and cultural studies at present since some of the emerging traditional rites seem to be inappropriate without literature foundation”.

The Project, amounting to as many as 140 million Chinese characters, is scheduled to collect, arrange, collate and study existing literature on traditional rites (up to the end of 1911), based on the punctuation, collation and addition of abstracts of the background, edition changes and outlines. Ten volumes in nine categories will be published, e.g. classics of rites, theories on rites, rite instruments, rites and music, art of rites, systems of rites, customs of rites, family rites and religious rites (Buddhism and Taoism). At present, eighteen books, some of the first exemplary achievements were published by Zhejiang University Press and issued in this Workshop.

On November 19th and 20th, “The First International Workshop on Rite China”, hosted by Research Institute for Ancient Booksand Center of Rite Studies of Zhejiang University, assisted by Institute for Advanced Humanistic Studies, PKU was held in Hangzhou, attracting over 40 experts and scholars from higher institutions, research centers in South Korea, India, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The discussions about the classification and arrangement of traditional literature on rites, the interpretation and studies of traditional rite resources and the exploration and studies of contemporary rite reconstruction were conducted in the Workshop.

Ren Shaobo, Vice Secretary of the Party Committee of Zhejiang University and Shao Qing, Vice Chairman of Zhejiang Federation of Social Sciencewere present at and addressed the opening ceremony.