Zuo qi, the seven-week rites
A sacrifice every seventh day after the burial, from the first week to the seventh, forty-nine days in all — and not the same thing as the chanting held at the coffin.
Pronunciation zuò qī｜Rites of life｜One entry in the Chaoshan glossary
What it means
A sacrifice every seventh day after the burial, from the first week to the seventh, forty-nine days in all. Families that count by the ten-day period instead make nine sacrifices, from the first period to the hundredth day, each with meat offerings, paper wardrobes and paper ingots.
The periods carry exceptions. The ninth is not observed at all and is avoided — the family keeps away from home and comes back only in the late afternoon. The sixth is offered by the married-out daughters, who also pay for a feast for the clansmen.
When you see it
It starts as soon as the burial is over. At the hundredth day the soul shrine is burnt, the mourning curtain taken down and the hemp garments put off; the funeral ends there. Then come the first anniversary and the second, and at the end of the third the tablet is raised into the ancestral shrine in the lineage hall — sheng kan, the raising of the tablet — and only then do the mourners come out of mourning.
Words easily confused
Zuo qi is a sacrifice every seventh day. Zuo gong de is the stretch of chanting held at the coffin before the burial. Zuo ji is the yearly sacrifice on the death anniversary; after enough years it moves to the spring and autumn equinoxes and is called the two seasonal sacrifices.
Custom in Chaoshan funerals; this page describes only, and neither endorses superstition nor urges anyone to follow it.
Read next: Funeral custom: from merit-making to the coffin leaving.
See also: Rites of life: the five thresholds side by side.
Same group: assuming mourning dress, merit-making, buying water.
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Last revised: 3 November 2026