etiquette in feudal society was formed in the Qin dynasty. In 221 BC, after the Qin Dynasty unified China, the first centralized feudal dynasty in the history of China was established. Qin Shihuang absorbed Xunzi? The idea of etiquette governing the country in Rich Country agrees that "propriety is for the country, such as weighing the weight, such as rope and ink are for the merits, so an old friend is rude, and the country is rude and restless", and promotes "the same book", "the same car" and "the same line" throughout the country. These etiquette systems formulated by the Qin Dynasty became the basis of the feudal system that lasted for more than 2, years.
The etiquette of feudal society was strengthened in the Western Han Dynasty. In the early Western Han Dynasty, Shu Suntong assisted Liu Bang, the Emperor of the Han Dynasty, to formulate the ritual instrument, and developed the ritual and etiquette. However, Dong Zhongshu, a thinker in the Western Han Dynasty, systematized the theory of feudal autocracy and put forward the theory that "only the emperor was ordered by heaven, and the world was ordered by the emperor". He gave a concrete overview of Confucian etiquette as "three cardinal guides and five permanents", that is, "the monarch is the minister's guide, the father is the child's guide, and the husband is the wife's guide"; The "five permanents" are benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and faith. Liu Che, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, adopted Dong Zhongshu's suggestion of "ousting a hundred schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone", which made Confucian ethics customized. Later, Confucius also compiled 49 articles in The Book of Rites, covering all aspects of customs, diet, family, clothing, teacher-student relationship and people's moral cultivation. The Book of Rites is a collection of ancient etiquette, which is the main source of etiquette in feudal times.
etiquette in feudal society began to decline in the late Qing dynasty. In the early Qing Dynasty, the etiquette system of the Han nationality was gradually accepted and complicated, which made some etiquette seem vain and cumbersome. It is stipulated in the Code of the Qing Dynasty that in the Qing Dynasty, when the person with the lowest grade pays homage to the person with the highest grade, he kneels three times at a time, and then kneels three times and knocks nine times. However, in the late Qing Dynasty, the Qing regime was corrupt, the people were in poverty, and ancient etiquette flourished and declined. With the spread of western learning to the east, some western etiquette was introduced into China, which also accelerated the rapid decline of feudal etiquette.