structural:reformatting, stylistic:style_transfer
Li

Having emerged during the Western Zhou, the li ritual system encoded an understanding of manners as an expression of the social hierarchy, ethics, and regulation concerning material life; the corresponding social practices became idealized within Confucian ideology.

The system was canonized in the Book of Rites, Rites of Zhou, and Etiquette and Ceremonial compiled during the Han dynasty (202 BC – 220 AD), thus becoming the heart of the Chinese imperial ideology. While the system was initially a respected body of concrete regulations, the fragmentation of the Western Zhou period led the ritual to drift towards moralization and formalization in regard to: