The Chinese Peasant Rituals and Pageantry

The imperial governments were positively obsessed with ritual propriety. So that's largely why you'd see such ceremonies and pageantry happening in the course of official functionsSuch as trials and court cases. To some extent, yes, it is there to offer counsel of a sort to the overseeing magistrate,. ye, albeit in a very oracle huffing cave fume sort of way. But at least as much as that, it was the appearance of havin what amounted to divine sanction for the judgment being handed down. Whether officials actually consulting them believed in it or not, it still conferred a degree of supernatural legitimacy on such decisions... And thereby to the donastic order as a whole.