Coming of Age in Confucian China
'Parents,' said Confucius, replying to a query respecting filial piety, 'ought to bear but one trouble—that of their own sickness.' It was also a saying of Confucius that 'Children should…
From: 1915 C.E. To: 1915 C.E.
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“The Internal Working of the Village,” part three, from Village and Town Life in China by Y.K. Liang and Li Kung Tao, 1915.
Filial piety is the first commandment and precept of the family. For instance, it is the most important duty of the children, including the daughters-in-law, to see that their parents suffer no want and that no sorrow nor care and anxiety may tread their path. "Parents," said Confucius, replying to a query respecting filial piety, "ought to bear but one trouble—that of their own sickness." It was also a saying of Confucius that "Children should not wander far while their parents are still living; and if they happened to wander they should at least have some fixed address."
After the death of the parents it is the duty of the sons to glorify their spirits, to continue their line, and to bring no discredit nor dishonour to it. Reverence and love for our parents are instilled into us from the moment we first saw light. To the babies are taught the lives of men and women distinguished for their filial piety instead of nursery rhymes.
The virtues of filial piety are so ingrained into us that to our mind there is no greater moral fault than offence against one's parents. Filial piety is enforced with serious sanctions within the family and the clan. In serious transgressions the transgressor may be brought before the clan tribunal, composed of the elders of the clan. This tribunal may order different degrees of punishment according to the nature of the transgression, from mere admonition with respect to the transgressor's conduct to blows with the lesser or larger bamboo, and excommunication from the clan.
The second rule of life in a Chinese family is love and loyalty to one's brothers. To be spoken of by one's kinsmen as a "dutiful son," and to be called a "good brother" by the folks of one's neighbourhood are, according to Confucius, good testimony of a virtuous man. The importance we attach to this virtue of love and loyalty to one's brothers may be gathered from a popular proverb of our's which says, "brothers are like hands and feet; wives and children are but like wearing apparel."
However, this is not to be interpreted literally. It only shows that, to us, the word “brother” means more than what is connoted by the word in other nations. As to wife and children, human nature is such that no system of ethics will cause other human ties to be considered dearer and more tender than these. The importance we attach to the virtue of love and loyalty to brothers is not without reason. Without it our family system will not work. It is this virtue together with that of filial piety which enables our family system to withstand the test of centuries.
Individualism is gradually creeping in, as is pointed out in an article in the Sociological Review, but whether it will effect any change or modification in our family system remains to be seen in the future. But so much is certain: in so far as it effects the two cardinal virtues of our domestic life, filial piety and brotherly love, so will it produce similar effects on our family organization.
Hitherto our rule of life as is taught us from our mother's knee to the schoolroom has ever been this: ''Be filial at home, and respectful towards your elders when away from home; be circumspect, be truthful; let your love go out freely towards all, cultivate goodwill to men. And if in such a walk there be time or energy left for other things, employ it in the acquisition of literary or artistic accomplishments." Whether such a rule needs reformulating will be a problem that will soon knock at our door.
Here a few words may be said on the education of girls in the Chinese family. It is often said that girls in the Chinese family are considered inferior to boys. Such a statement may be accounted for by erroneous interpretation of our mode of conduct and expressing ideas. For instance, our mode of educating girls, at least in former times, is certainly unlike that adopted in the West. Ours may be a wrong method, but we use it not because we consider girls inferior to boys.
Such a notion is most remote from our mind. It is given them because, according to our ideas it best suits them, just as in the West a special training is given to a boy who is going to take up a particular profession. With us all girls are potential mothers of families, and a method of education with that end in view is accordingly adopted.
It is a moot point whether our method of educating girls is superior or inferior to that adopted in the West. To us, at least to the village folks, education does not necessarily include the mechanical appliance of reading and writing. It rather consists in the apprehension of lofty ideas and the understanding of the philosophy of life.
It is this form of education which gives the Chinese labourer those characteristic qualities which are so well known all over the globe: his dogged perseverance, his incessant cheerfulness in extreme hardships, his marvellous contentedness, his love for orderliness and extraordinary intelligence. The moral and economic value of such qualities are immeasurable.
Again, it is this form of education which enables a Chinese girl to manage a family at an age when a girl in the West has scarcely left off schooling. (It often happens that the mother of the family, either through ill-health or old age, delegates all her duties to her daughter-in-law.) As a rule she knows just so much reading as to be able to decipher her husband's name and her own, and to understand the figures in house-keeping accounts. She is well versed in the arts of cooking. She makes all her own personal apparel, and those of her husband and children. The tailor is seldom or never patronized, and shoes and headgear are made at home.
In a word, there is not a single art of domestic economy of which she does not possess practical knowledge. In addition to fulfilling all these multifarious duties, she adds considerably to the family income by such employments as embroidery, needlework, weaving, and the like.
On the other hand she is not without literary culture, though she may be ignorant as regards reading and writing. She is familiar with beautiful literature, not by reading, but by hearing from minstrels and from those who know. It is a common recreation for women and girls while at their work to listen to minstrels, as a rule aged and blind, singing to them the classics of Chinese poetry, romances and legends, and historical chronicles, and very often when no minstrels are at hand they each sing in turn, and all from memory.
As they generally cannot read, their powers of memory are marvellously developed. It is quite an ordinary thing for a girl to repeat from memory word for word a poetical legend of several thousand lines after having heard it but several times. I wonder whether an average factory girl in England would be able to recite off-hand a stanza from Shakespeare or any other poet. But the poetries of Li Tai Peh and Su Tong Po are on the lips of all our village women folks. An average girl, too, has frequently to exercise her powers of composition. On the marriage or death of relatives and friends she has to recite extempore appropriate verses of her own on such subjects as the sorrows and joys of hfe, the virtues of filial piety, friendship, and so on.
These, then, are briefly a few of the leading characteristics of the Chinese family system. On some of the moral aspects of the system, and on its social and political functions, more will be said in dealing with Town Life.
Liang, Y. K., and Li Kung Tao. Village and Town Life in China. MacMillan Co., 1915.
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