Ancestral temples were built for the spirits of people's deceased ancestors. Tablets bearing the names of the ancestors were housed in the temples for worship and sacrificial purposes. In the ancient Chinese temple system, ancestral temples mainly referred to the special temples where kings, princes and others offered sacrifices to their ancestors. According to rules of the Zhou Dynasty, a sovereign ruler could have seven temples, a prince could build five, a minister three, a shi (士 a person at the social stratum between the aristocracy and the common people) could only have one. A common person was not allowed to have any temple. If a state or dynasty was defeated and no longer in existence, its ancestral temples would often be destroyed. Therefore, just like terms such as “rivers and mountains,” or “state power,” “ancestral temples” was often used as a term to refer to the royal family, the court or state power. Ancestral temples were a product of the continuation of ancestral worship and a manifestation of the principle that family and state share the same structure.