In ancient China, none was more critical than the annual sacrifice to Heaven, which marked the beginning of the dynasty’s reign in China and was performed annually until its end.
The sacrifice began the day before the Winter Solstice, when the Emperor went from the Forbidden City along a route blocked from public view to the inner enclosure of the Temple of Heaven. Crossing the 360-metre-long Bridge of Cinnabar Steps (Danbi qiao), he spent the night fasting in the moat-ringed Hall of Abstinence (Zhai gong). Two hours before daybreak, he dressed in plum-colored robes embroidered with the twelve auspicious imperial symbols, proceeded to the altar enclosure, and waited in a yellow silk tent until the sacred tablets were brought from the Temple of Heaven. He ascended the altar’s three terraces, symbols of Man, Earth and Heaven, where, to the solemn music of a carillon and flanked by ancestral tablets, he faced the tablet of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe and watched as the offering was placed on the sacrificial furnace. He then prostrated himself nine times before the tablet and made offerings of silk and jade. After repeating this performance two more times, he waited in his tent until the tablets were safely enshrined, then returned to the palace along the same blocked route.
