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State and Family in China Filial Piety and its Modern
Reform 1st Edition Yue Du Digital Instant Download
Author(s): Yue Du, æ​œä¹​
ISBN(s): 9781108968942, 1108976085
Edition: 1
File Details: PDF, 2.83 MB
Year: 2022
Language: english
State and Family in China

In Imperial China, the idea of filial piety not only shaped family relations
but was also the official ideology by which Qing China was governed. In
State and Family, Yue Du examines the relationship between politics and
intergenerational family relations in China from the Qing period to
1949, focusing on changes in family law, parent–child relationships,
and the Chinese state during this period. This book highlights how the
Qing dynasty treated the state-sponsored parent–child hierarchy as the
axis around which Chinese family and political power relations were
constructed and maintained. It shows how following the fall of the Qing
in 1911, reform of filial piety law in the Republic of China became the
basis of state-directed family revolution, playing a central role in China’s
transition from empire to nation-state.

Yue Du is Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese History at Cornell

University.
State and Family in China
Filial Piety and Its Modern Reform

Yue Du
Cornell University
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Title: State and family in China : filial piety and its modern reform / Yue Du.
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Identifiers: LCCN 2021025511 (print) | LCCN 2021025512 (ebook) | ISBN
9781108838351 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108978811 (paperback) | ISBN
9781108974479 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Families – China – History. | Filial piety – China – History. |
Family policy – China – History. | BISAC: HISTORY / Asia / General
Classification: LCC HQ684 .A246 2022 (print) | LCC HQ684 (ebook) | DDC
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The official serves the ruler, the son serves his father, the wife serves her
husband. If these three are done then all under Heaven is ordered, if
these three are not done then all under Heaven is in chaos.
—Han Fei Zi

Those who behave filially obediently towards their parents and submis-
sively to their elder siblings seldom show a disposition to resist the
authority of their superiors. And as for such men starting a rebellion,
no instance of it has ever occurred.
—The Analects of Confucius

When the great Way is abandoned, there are benevolence and righteous-
ness. When wisdom and intelligence come forth, there is great hypoc-
risy. When the six familial relationships are out of balance, there are kind
parents and filial children. When the state is in turmoil and chaos, there
are loyal ministers.
—The Daodejing of Laozi
 Contents

Preface page ix
List of Abbreviations xiv

Introduction: Filial Piety beyond Confucianism 1

Part I Ruling the Empire through the Principle of Filiality 21

1 “Parents Can Never Be Wrong”: Punishing Rebellious
Children as a Didactic Show 23
2 Policies and Counterstrategies: Negotiating
State-Sponsored Filiality in the Everyday 60
3 “Parenting All under Heaven on Behalf of Heaven”:
State-Sponsored Filiality and Imperial Rulership 93

Part II Building the Nation through Restructuring

the Family 133
4 Reorienting Parent–Child Relations: From Parents’
Authority to Children’s Rights 135
5 Reconceptualizing Parent–Child Relations: From Lifelong
Parental Privilege to Transitory Guardianship 168
6 A Constitutional Agenda: Remaking the Family to Make
a New State 203
Conclusion: Filial Piety toward the State 242

Glossary 254
Bibliography 270
Index 289

vii
 Preface

When I visited Sichuan provincial archives in Chengdu, China, for the

first time in summer 2015, I brought with me a research topic on concu-
binage and motherhood in the Qing (1644–1911) that I envisioned would
develop into my dissertation. I had no idea that randomly browsing over
some case files would eventually transform my dissertation into a very
different project. A filicide case caught my attention. Huang Xingren and
his wife brought their infant girl when visiting and trying to borrow from
Huang’s maternal uncle. After the uncle refused, the girl was thrown to
the ground in front of the uncle’s home and died. The magistrate, upon
receiving a report from the uncle on Huang’s filicide, investigated the case
personally. He allowed the testimonies to be changed several times.
Eventually, all involved agreed that the girl was accidentally dropped
from the bosom of Huang’s wife and died despite great efforts from all
parties to save her. The case was closed as an accident, which, as the
magistrate’s legal advisor commented, required no further review. The
file, including the contradictory testimonies produced during the investi-
gation, was not intended for anyone outside the Ba county administra-
tive-judicial complex, certainly not for twentieth-century historians
like me.
With prior knowledge on the existence of a statute in the Qing code
assigning punishments for those “who killed their children or grandchil-
dren in order to falsely accuse others,” the historian in me noticed the
potential for fascinating narratives if I could find more cases like this.
However, the more intentional filicide cases I identified, the more the
mother in me, which I often purposefully separated from my “historian
self,” cried out. Day and night, I terribly missed my two-year-old, whom I
left behind in New Jersey. I was so grateful for my loving mother, who was
selflessly taking care of my little one on my behalf, and for my husband,
who had grown so much by shouldering the responsibility of fatherhood.
Why were there parents who valued their children, especially little girls, so
little that they saw killing them as a small price to pay if the bodies could
be used to frame others or extract money? Why were there neighbors and

ix
x Preface

relatives who saw no problem in collaborating with the parents to cover

things up? Why were there judicial officials who tended to record filicide
cases as accidents, and who meted out light punishments even when
parents were convicted? Why did the Qing code attach so little weight
to filicide, while designating extremely harsh penalties for children who
slightly offended their parents? Both the historian and the mother in me
realized that these questions obliged me to reorient my dissertation.
I knew and believed that emotions and self-perceived interests were
socially constructed. But I now felt it more than ever. I needed to explain
why something I took for granted – care and love between parents and
children – materialized in the Qing so differently, at least where state
regulation was concerned. In the years that followed, the project devel-
oped into something beyond my wildest imagination. Filicide and its light
punishment have become a very small part of the narrative. The book now
shows how the Qing state employed a large range of tools to buttress
parents’ supremacy over adult and minor children – punishing children
who accused parents even when the accusations proved to be true, beat-
ing and canguing children publicly upon parental requests, executing
parricides by slicing despite mitigating circumstances, accepting parents’
testimonies against children while ignoring contradictory evidence, and
assigning little or no punishment to parents who abused or falsely accused
their children. The degree of instrumentalization of parent–child rela-
tions in the Qing is stunning, but the cold logic underneath such instru-
mentalization is not difficult to figure out – the emperor, who described
himself as being the imperial subjects’ father-mother, and the magistrate,
who was literally referred to as the people’s father-mother-official, drew
strength from a parallel structure that demanded unquestioning obedi-
ence from children toward parents, both real and metaphorical.
What stimulated me to think deeper was propaganda images on the
“China Dream” sponsored by the current Chinese government.
I encountered these images at airports, in the street, and on televisions
during my archival trips. Many of them featured themes that appeared to
deeply resonate with the imperial past, such as “filial piety comes first”;
notions that seemed to be a combination of modern and traditional
elements, such as “unlimited debt toward the motherland”; and expres-
sions that connected family values with patriotism, such as “state is
family.” Something is going on in contemporary Chinese society and
politics that allows my project, while rooted in history, to speak to the
present. I could not fully understand state-sponsored revival of filial piety
in today’s China without stepping into unfamiliar research realms –
culture, politics, and the twentieth century. Yes, researchers change
their topics and extend their fields of expertise. But was it too ambitious
 Preface xi

for a PhD student to do so for her dissertation? To tell a story about not
only law in the Qing but also the trajectory of state and society in China in
its empire-to-nation transformation, even if only through the lens of filial
piety and its modern reform, would make it impractical for me to collect
statistically meaningful data to show representation of my cases. At the
same time, such an approach would oblige me to read and engage a much
larger literature, and to address the waves of reforms in the twentieth
century that were harder to pin down than Qing situations. All needed to
be accomplished within the time and space limits a junior scholar faced in
finishing her first book-length project. While part of me was deliberating
the pros and cons of taking the risk, the other part of me already knew the
right answer. Since its conception, the project developed a life of its own.
My task was to nurture it, to guide it to its full potential, and to let it shine
when the time came. The author did not own the project. The author
shouldered the responsibility of a guardian – the role Chinese law
assigned to parents in the modern era. During the past seven years, the
project has grown and matured. I am sincerely grateful for the journey I
have spent with it, a journey that has made me a better historian and a
better person.
I sometimes feel that the role I have played in the life of State and Family
in China is mostly channeling the spring of wisdom and care from men-
tors, friends, and larger intellectual communities whose help has been
indispensable. I owe deepest gratitude to my advisor, Joanna Waley-
Cohen. When I started at NYU as a PhD student in 2012, I was a shy
girl who was excited about but also scared of what lay ahead of me. When
I left in 2018, I was a confident young professor and a proud mom. Joanna
was instrumental in this magic transformation, guiding me with patience
and trust as well as providing me with the best role model of a historian, a
teacher, and a citizen of the world. Madeleine Zelin has been a great
mentor who, with her meticulousness and intellectual breadth, has left
deep marks on me and on many promising young scholars who have
studied with her at Columbia University. I owe many thanks to Leslie
Peirce and Rebecca Karl, who inspired me to advance my theoretical
thinking and narrative skills. And I am thankful for Zvi Ben-Dor Benite
and Eugenia Lean, who have been supportive of my intellectual and
career development.
Mentors and colleagues at Cornell University have given me support
on all fronts. Sherman Cochran read the entire manuscript of State and
Family twice. His detailed marks and thoughtful suggestions reminded
me of what Joanna once did on my dissertation. John Barwick, Judith
Byfield, Larry Glickman, TJ Hinrichs, Tamara Loos, and Aaron Sachs
read whole or part of the manuscript. Their comments have been vital in
xii Preface

my pre- and post-review revision of the book. Durba Ghosh has given me
helpful advice on framework and publication. I also thank Ed Baptist,
Ernesto Bassi Arevalo, Derek Chang, Maria Cristina Garcia, Sandra
Greene, Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Mostafa Minawi, Russell Rickford,
Barry Strauss, Peidong Sun, Eric Tagliacozzo, Robert Travers, Claudia
Verhoeven, Margaret Washington, and Rachel Weil for their warm encour-
agement and support along the way. I owe particular thanks to members of
the writing group of junior faculty at the Department of History: Cristina
Florea, Nick Mulder, Kristin Roebuck, Casey Schmitt, and Stephen Vider.
And I am thankful for the wonderful intellectual community of China
scholars at Cornell, particularly Nick Admussen, Allen Carlson, Eli
Friedman, Robin McNeal, Suyoung Son, Jeremy Wallace, Ding Xiang
Warner, Jessica Chen Weiss, and John Zinda.
Throughout the years, I have had the good fortune to receive help and
advice from many mentors and friends. Li Chen (University of Toronto)
and Shuang Chen (University of Iowa) have been mentors for me ever
since my first years in graduate school. Their references enabled me to gain
precious access to county-level archives newly available to researchers. And
their suggestions on publication, book manuscript, and career develop-
ment benefited me greatly. I owe thanks to Edward McCord (George
Washington University), Tobie Meyer-Fong (Johns Hopkins University),
Steven Miles (Washington University at St. Louis), Matthew Sommer
(Stanford University), and Peter Zarrow (University of Connecticut) for
the indispensable help they gave me during the early development of my
research in legal and cultural history, and to Jenny Huangfu Day
(Skidmore College), Yanjie Huang (National University of Singapore),
Ling-wei Kung (Academia Sinica), Hoyt Tillman (Arizona State
University), and Margaret Tillman (Perdue University) for their friendship
and advice. I am thankful for Xiaoping Cong (University of Houston),
Frédéric Constant (Université Nice Sophia Antipolis), Jing Fenghua
(Sichuan University), Lai Junnan (Fudan University), Ling Ma (SUNY
Geneseo), and Taisu Zhang (Yale University) for the intellectually inspir-
ing exchanges they had with me. Special thanks go to Johanna Ransmeier,
who shared with me her suggestions on narrative writing in a most frank
and stimulating conversation. I am deeply indebted to Norman Kutcher
and Maram Epstein. State and Family in China would not have been what it
is without their excellent works on filial piety that have laid the foundation
for discussing parent–child relations as a key to understanding Chinese
history. Last, but not least, this book would not have been what it is without
contributions from Ursula Acton, Rachel Blaifeder, Lucy Rhymer, and
Melissa Ward at the Cambridge University Press and the two anonymous
readers who gave me extraordinarily engaging comments and suggestions.
 Preface xiii

I thank my high school teachers, Li Qingsheng and Wang Dai, and my

advisor at Peking University, Deng Xiaonan, for opening up the vast
frontiers of intellectual exploration to me. I chose teaching as my future
career and history as my field of study because I aimed to evoke the same
excitement of discovery that I felt when I studied under their guidance.
My husband, Chen Yang, has given me love, understanding, and support
during the course of my archival research, dissertation writing, and book
manuscript revision. Our son, Andrew, has been a constant blessing to us
in the last nine years.
Before State and Family in China leaves its “natal home,” I beg to leave
my last mark on it by dedicating it to my late father, Du Degang, and my
mother, Gao Qing. Their unconditional love and friendship are the
evidence that true love transcends any ethic notions such as parental
benevolence and filial piety. Love never fails.
 Abbreviations

BMA Beijing Municipal Archives.

BXDA The Ba County Archives at the Sichuan
Provincial Archives.
DLCY Xue Yunsheng. Du li cun yi (lingering doubts after
studying the substatutes). 5 vols. Edited and
punctuated by Huang Jingjia. Taibei: Chengwen
chubanshe, 1970 [1905].
DQXXLLFZLHB Gao Hancheng, ed. Daqing xinxinglü lifa ziliao
huibian (a legislative data corpus of the Qing
dynasty’s new criminal law). Beijing: Shehui
kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2013.
DQXXXL Daqing xianxing xinglü (the current criminal code
in effect of the Qing). Xuxiu siku quanshu (sequel
to the complete collection in the imperial four
treasuries), vol.864. Shanghai: Shanghai guji
chubanshe, 1995.
HICCRC The Chinese Cultural Revolution Collection at
the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
JDWX Qing and Republican Contracts at Shanghai
Jiaotong University.
JJDA Jiangjin County Archives at Shanghai Jiaotong
University.
LFZZ Extra copies of Palace Memorials at the First
Historical Archives of China.
LQDA Longquan County Archives at Zhejiang
University.
MF (1929–1930) The Civil Code of the Republic of China (1929–
1930). In A Compilation of the Laws of the
Republic of China, edited by David C. C. Kang,
vol.1. Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1967.
NBXDA The Nanbu County Archives at the Nanchong
Municipal Archives.
xiv
 List of Abbreviations xv

SCDA The Shuangcheng Subprefectural Archives at the

Shuangcheng District Archives.
SMA Shanghai Municipal Archives.
SLCCRC The Chinese Cultural Revolution Collection at
the East Asian Library at Stanford University.
STFDA Shuntian Prefectural Archives at the First
Historical Archives of China.
XAHLQB Xing’an huilan quanbian (a conspectus of judicial
cases). 15 vols. Beijing: Falü chubanshe, 2008.
XF (1935) The Criminal Code of the Republic of China (1935).
In A Compilation of the Laws of the Republic of
China, edited by David C. C. Kang, vol.2.
Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1967.
XKTB The Routine Memorials of the Board of
Punishments at the First Historical Archives of
China.
XSSSF (1935) The Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of
China (1935). In A Compilation of the Laws of the
Republic of China, edited by David C. C. Kang,
vol.2. Taibei: Sanmin shuju, 1967.
ZPZZ Palace Memorial with Imperial Vermilion com-
ments at the First Historical Archives of China.
 Introduction
Filial Piety beyond Confucianism

On December 25, 1815, Wang Dacai, a barber from Guangshun prefec-

ture, Guizhou province, killed himself by stabbing an iron rod into his
throat. This suicide was a result of the regret (huihen ziqiang biming) Dacai
felt after hearing that his son, the 12-sui Wang Hebao, would be sen-
tenced to death because the boy had slightly pricked the skin around his
father’s throat (taoqi houxia fupi) under the father’s order. On
December 17, Wang Dacai was caught committing illicit sex. The adul-
teress’s family tied Dacai to a tree, planning to send him and the adulter-
ess to the authorities later. Wang Dacai ordered his son, who visited him,
to slightly injure him in the hope of using a countersuit to threaten his
captors into dropping the adultery charge. Unfortunately for Dacai, two
passers-by caught sight of the whole scene, and reported it to the local
authorities. After his injury was examined, Wang Dacai was released. His
son was kept in official custody and sent to the provincial capital for trial.
Eventually, the son was sentenced to beheading subject to review at the
autumn assizes (zhan jianhou), due to clemency directly from the
emperor. This penalty was one degree reduced from the original penalty
designated for striking one’s parent, owing to the filial motivation of
Hebao’s action as well as his lack of full agency due to his underage status
(nian fu shi’er, youzhi wuzhi).1
1
The summary of this case is based on ZPZZ, no.04–01–01–0569–044. Under Qing law,
criminal punishments fell into five general categories (The Five Punishments): (1) beating
with the light bamboo stick or (2) the heavy one, (3) penal servitude, (4) exile, and (5)
death. During the Qing, beating with the light bamboo stick was usually converted to
beating with the enlarged bamboo stick but with a reduced number of strokes. There were
two degrees of death penalty: strangulation and beheading. Both could be executed
immediately or subject to review at the autumn assizes. In addition, two other forms of
death penalty – death by slicing (lingchi chusi) and publicly displaying the head of the
executed (xiaoshou shizhong) – were also meted out to certain crimes that were deemed
particularly abhorrent. See Xiaoqun Xu, Trial of Modernity, 32; DLCY, Article 001.00, 1.
The Great Qing Code, first promulgated in 1647, was largely based on the Ming code. It
contained both statutes (lü), generally fixed by 1740, and substatutes (li), which continued
to change. The final revision was promulgated in 1905. References to the Qing Code are to
Xue Yunsheng’s (1970 [1905]) compilation, as edited by Huang Jingjia (hereafter cited as
DLCY); the statutes and substatutes are cited by Huang’s numbering system. In Qing

1
2 Introduction

According to Wang Dacai, Wang Hebao initially refused to carry out his
father’s order. But the father frightened the boy into complying by threat-
ening to kill him once they both returned home (yi huijia chusi zhiyan
weihe). The father, like parents in many other cases that are to be examined
in this book, was successful in exercising his parental control by forcing his
son to conduct an action against the boy’s will. However, once the Qing
authorities took the case into the formal legal process upon receiving
a report about a son inflicting an injury on his father, the situation quickly
slipped out of the father’s hands. The father’s adultery was indeed a serious
violation of both Qing law and morality. But it paled in comparison with
a child’s slight physical offense against his father, which was, in Qing legal
vocabulary, a violation of fundamental human ethics (nilun/mielun) that
called for immediate and direct attention from the emperor. Scholars of
premodern Chinese law have observed: “The [Qing] magistrate acted as
agent through which the parental will was carried out”;2 “The law was the
chief instrument through which the parental will was recognized and
implemented.”3 But these commonly accepted expressions of scholarly
wisdom obviously did not apply to this case.
By stabbing an iron rod into his throat at the exact spot where his son had
injured his skin under his own command, the father conveyed, albeit prob-
ably unintentionally, his resentment against a system that was supposed to
support his control over his child but that actually merely upheld the
impersonal authority of parent over child as relational power parallel to the
ruler’s supremacy over his subjects. Wang Dacai’s case as cited complicates
existing scholarly understandings regarding state–family relations in Qing
China, raising important questions on the nature of state rule in the China-
based empire as well as the role of filial piety in sustaining the imperial state.4
In this book, I follow stories of locals, like Wang Dacai and his son, as
well as their circumstances, choices, reasoning, and actions. At the same
time, the state – empire and republic alike – played a conspicuous role in
these stories, with law serving as the medium of communication between
state and non-state actors. Law in late imperial China did not put the

China, a newborn was considered one sui old. After passing his/her first Chinese New
Year, he/she became two sui. A twelve-sui boy was likely eleven years old in December.
2
Mühlhahn, Criminal Justice in China, 51.
3
Qu, Law and Society in Traditional China, 24.
4
For a similar case involving state punishment of children against parental will in support of
the impersonal cult of filiality, see Li Songnian’s case of 1822, where a mother committed
suicide after hearing that her son, who had been sent to the county court for discipline by
the mother herself, would be exiled to imperial frontiers. For my analysis of Li Songnian’s
case and Qing policies of punishing habitually disobedient sons harshly regardless of
parental preference, see Yue Du, “Parenthood and the State in China,” 62–64; for Qu
Tongzu’s reference of this case in the context of the Qing definition of “forcing parents to
commit suicide,” see Qu, Law and Society in Traditional China, 56.
 Introduction 3

family outside of the reach of the formal justice apparatus; neither was it
the case that “the government merely acted as agent, framed the [family-
related] regulations and saw to it that they were carried out.”5 As this
book will demonstrate, late imperial Chinese law, and the imperial state
behind the law, had its own logic in reinforcing parental authority.
Available legal tools could be employed by parents who sought assistance
in controlling their children’s persons, social relations, labor, and prop-
erty. Nevertheless, law was first and foremost a language of politics, rather
than an instrument of Confucian morality or parental will. It was the
political concern centered on dynastic legitimacy and imperial govern-
ance that lay at the heart of the legally sanctioned cult of filiality, which
was crystallized in the well-known maxim – “ruling the empire by the
principle of filial piety” (xiao zhi tianxia).6
This book is a study in state regulation of parent–child relations as an
arena where morality, law, state governance, and local life were formed
and reformed. It treats “ruling the empire by the principle of filial piety”
as a governing mechanism that characterized the China-based empire in
its second millennium. This governing mechanism, which influenced
how family relations were perceived by the imperial state and local actors
alike, set the stage for state-sponsored family reform in twentieth-century
China. In a country where the ruling polity, the nation, and the state were
and are literally referred to as guojia (state–family), the imperial cult of
filiality and its modern appropriation provide a particularly revealing lens
through which to analyze the entanglement between state and family.7

Filial Piety as the Axis of Chinese “Genderational”

Relations
Traditional Chinese ethics, theorized by Henry Rosemont, Jr. and
Roger T. Ames as “role ethics,” conceptualized humanity not in terms

5
Qu, Law and Society in Traditional China, 24.
6
For an example of the application of this maxim, see Milne, trans. and annot., The Sacred
Edict, 29.
7
Guojia meant a hereditary fiefdom in pre-Qin literary Chinese. It had been used as an
equivalent to the hereditary, dynastic state throughout imperial Chinese history, until
a new meaning – a trans-dynastic nation-state featuring the people as the sovereign –
emerged in the late Qing in diplomatic engagement with Western countries and through
translation of international law. Nevertheless, the lingering connection between the polit-
ical dynasty as broadly defined and the nation-state remained and still remains in what
guojia connotes, making it easy to conflate the ruling regime with the nation in political
discourse and daily language. The multifarious notion guojia and its role in China’s
imperial politics and modern state building will be the topic of my next monograph,
China: From a Nationless State to a Nation Defined by State. For the late Qing transform-
ation of guojia, see Yue Du, “From Dynastic State to Imperial Nation.”
4 Introduction

of rights-bearing individuals but role-bearing persons whose roles were

“first, foremost, and most basically” defined by their relationship to
their parents.8 While the importance of parent–child relations in pre-
modern China has long been recognized, scholarly treatment of gener-
ational relations is focused on the formation of strong emotional and
social bonds between parents and children, primarily drawing from
prescriptive, commemorative, and biological writings produced by cul-
tural elites.9 One outstanding example is Maram Epstein’s recent
monograph Orthodox Passions: Narrating Filial Love during the High
Qing, which examines how adult identity in premodern China was
constructed through a conjugal family that was an extension of, rather
than an antithesis to, the intergenerational family structure. Epstein
successfully restores filial piety (xiao) to the heart of the discussion of
the family as a site of sentiment.10 While generating valuable scholarly
dialogues, studies of parent–child relations in the context of the senti-
mental family have not adequately studied either the state, with its
coercive legal machinery, or non-elites, who constituted the greatest
portion of society. This gap invites questions about the role the state
played in appropriating, disseminating, and enforcing the fundamental
ethics of filial piety beyond intergenerational connections between
members of the literati class.
Average subjects of the imperial state did not generally have perfect
understanding of orthodox notions of family ethics. But they were aware
of and adept at using the leverage law-enforced family ethics provided
them. In Wang Dacai’s case of 1815, for example, the father used the
threat of killing his son – perfectly within a parent’s legal authority over his
disobedient child during the Qing (1644–1911) – to force his son into
doing his bidding.11 On the one hand, this general conformity between
state conception and social production of the parent–child hierarchy
indicated the entrenchment of filial piety in society as a result of centuries
of mutual reinforcement between imperial rule and family order. On the

8
For the theorization of role ethics in traditional China, see Ames, Confucian Role Ethics.
And see Rosemont and Ames, Confucian Moral Ethics; citation is from 52.
9
For studies of social and emotional bonds between parents and children in elite families
in pre-modern China, see, for example, Hsiung, A Tender Voyage; her “Constructed
Emotions”; and her “Female Gentility in Transition and Transmission.” Weijing Lu, “A
Pearl in the Palm”; and her “Reviving an Ancient Ideal.” Epstein “Patrimonial Bonds.”
Cong Ellen Zhang, Performing Filial Piety in Northern Song China.
10
Epstein, Orthodox Passions.
11
DLCY, Article 319.00, 949–950. It was stipulated that grandparents and parents who
beat their children to death “without reason” (feili) would be punished by 100 strokes of
beating by the heavy bamboo stick; but if the child disobeyed parental instruction and
died in the process of being beaten by the parent without the parent’s intent of killing the
child, the parent would not be liable for any penalty.
 Introduction 5

other hand, the discrepancy between formal administration of law and

local understanding of justice, also evident in Wang Dacai’s misunder-
standing of the boundaries of his parental power, reveals the uneven
interaction between state and society. The difference between legal pre-
scription and vernacular understanding became a chasm in the first half of
the twentieth century, during which waves of legal reforms accompanying
frequent regime changes made it difficult for many in China to pin down
the situation. This chasm proved to be a formidable challenge which the
state had to confront in its legally enforced projects of modernizing
Chinese families.
The immediate context within which Wang Dacai forced his son to do
something against his son’s will was exceptional. The degree of parental
authority Dacai exercised was nonetheless typical of late imperial Chinese
society. While by no means static, the Qing was consistent in its promo-
tion of filial values in discourse and in its buttressing of parental power by
law. Qing sponsorship of filial piety was not significantly different from
Ming (1368–1644) practice despite a trend toward more vigorous legis-
lation in the eighteenth century. Foreign invasions in the mid-nineteenth
century shook neither moral foundations nor ruling mechanisms of the
Qing in a fundamental way, with the influence of the Self-Strengthening
Movement (1861–95) mostly limited to state-run military and commer-
cial projects. Even the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom (1850–64) that rav-
aged the Qing with a localized Christian religion featured filial piety to be
one of the most frequently discussed virtues in its theology.12 No major
changes concerning state regulation and social practice of generational
relations, at least as reflected in law codes and local cases, can be detected
until the last decade of Qing rule.
Filial piety law was under fierce attack by reformist legislators during
the late Qing New Policy Reform (1902–11). When the Qing empire fell
in 1911, China’s two thousand years of imperial tradition fell with it,
leaving a legacy of the cult of filiality that the modern nation-state in
China struggled to overcome under the early Republican (1912–28), the
Nationalist (1928–49), and the Communist (1949–present) govern-
ments. Within a few decades after the fall of China’s last dynasty, an
empire that conceived the emperor as parenting his children-subjects (wei
min fumu) through layered delegation of power was reconceptualized into
a fatherland (zuguo) that called for loyalty and sacrifice directly from its
sons and daughters. As the modern state put its hope in younger gener-
ations and in the future, it demolished the legitimating and governing
mechanisms of the empire, and it endeavored to establish a new system of

12
Kilcourse, Taiping Theology, especially 125–130.
6 Introduction

unmediated state–citizen relationship. To achieve the goal of overcoming

intertwined political and legal traditions inherited from the empire, mod-
ern state builders in China were determined to reform familist (jiazu
zhuyi) law into statist (guojia zhuyi) law. But it proved to be a complex
task to make the foreign-inspired modern state and its legal apparatus
grow effectively in the social soil influenced by centuries of imperial rule.
In the 1910s and 1920s, an overabundance of filial sons was condemned
in cultural discourse and in the legislative hall as a major cause of China’s
“backwardness.” In the 1930s and 1940s, new civil and criminal codes
were promulgated to reorient laws that had once viewed family members
differentially, depending on their relative status, so that each family
member was treated as an autonomous individual. In the 1950s and
1960s, children were expected not only to educate their parents on values
of a new society but also to denounce those parents who failed to keep up
with the ever-faster pace of the revolutionary state. In the context of direct
state–citizen relations, upholding parents’ power over their children was
not the state’s priority; conversely, the state took legal means to curb
parental authority.
The twentieth-century reform of state-sponsored filiality embodied the
principal struggle of modern China: How to build a modern nation-state as
both an heir to and an antithesis of the China-based empire. Parent–child
relations, more so than any other family relations, saw the most dramatic
changes in China’s empire-to-nation transformation. Generational power
dynamics were almost overturned in China within a few decades, as this
book will show in detail. This family revolution was intimately connected to
the guiding, and often coercive, hand of the state. The highly politicized
nature of state-sponsored reconstruction of generational order makes this
aspect of family reform particularly important for studies of state–family
relations in China’s long twentieth century.
Approaching state and family through examining parent–child rela-
tions enables this book to bridge two isolated bodies of scholarship on
state building in China: one on high Qing administrative incorporation
and moral penetration of local society, and the other on waves of foreign-
inspired reforms and revolutions that turned China from a semi-colony
into an authoritarian party-state. In the past few decades, the role of state
regulation of family relations in Qing state building and civilizing projects
has received considerable attention from scholars. Work done by such
historians as Matthew Sommer, Janet Theiss, and Hsieh Bao Hua have
greatly transformed scholarly understanding of Qing empire building,
presenting the Qing as an early modern state that masterfully employed
social policies and law, as well as war and political maneuvering, as
governing tools. This body of scholarship, with the notable exception of
 Introduction 7

Norman Kutcher’s Mourning in Late Imperial China: Filial Piety and the
State, studies Qing regulation of family relations mostly, if not exclusively,
from the angles of sexuality and marriage.13 Interestingly, sexuality and
conjugal relations are also the favored lenses through which scholars, such
as Susan Glosser, Margaret Kuo, Lisa Tran, Elizabeth Remick, Zhao Ma,
Xiaoping Cong, among others, have discussed the relationship between
the family and the modernizing state in the first half of the twentieth
century.14 Surprisingly little research has been done on generational
relations in Qing and Republican China, especially where law and discip-
line are concerned.15
State and Family in China is inspired by these excellent studies of state–
family relations, but it unapologetically focuses on the inadequately studied
generational dynamics when investigating the epic journey China went
through in its transformation from an empire that “ruled through the
principle of filiality” to a self-proclaimed revolutionary regime that justified
its authoritarian rule in the name of parental tutelage. As will be shown in
detail in this book, the late imperial Chinese state upheld the hierarchy
between parents and children much more rigidly than it did the supremacy
of husbands over wives. Yet, the Republic of China delivered generational
equality more than gender equality in law. This state-sponsored drastic
change in generational relations in China’s empire-to-nation transform-
ation means one thing: The relationship between parents and children lay
at the core of imperial rule in China and was a key to the making of modern
China, with the gender hierarchy as subordinate to it. Chinese family order
can be best conceptualized as “genderational” – generational and gender
orders closely intertwined with each other. Only by offering a longue durée
analysis of the reconfiguration of parent–child relations without neglecting
its gendered attributes is it possible to develop a comprehensive view on

13
Theiss, Disgraceful Matters; Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China; and his
Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China; Hsieh, Concubinage and Servitude in
Late Imperial China; Elliot, “Manchu Widows and Ethnicity in Qing China.” For a review
of the cult of chastity in late imperial China, see Tillman, “Female Virtue and Confucian
Order.”
14
Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953; Kuo, Intolerable Cruelty; Tran,
Concubines in Court; Remick, Regulating Prostitution in China; Ma, Runaway Wives, Urban
Crimes, and Survival Tactics in Wartime Beijing; Cong, Marriage, Law, and Gender in
Revolutionary China.
15
There are a few exceptions in books on state–family relations in Republican China that do
address generational relations. One is Johanna Ransmeier’s Sold People, which discusses
both gender and generational relations in the context of human trafficking. Another is
Margaret Tillman’s Raising China’s Revolutionaries, which concentrates on the concept of
childhood, mostly from the perspective of educational institutions and international
collaboration. In State and Family in China, “child” is used to refer to a (grand)son or
(grand)daughter of any age, in relation to descent. Intergenerational relations, rather
than childhood, is the focus of this book.
8 Introduction

how China navigated through sharp turns over state–family relations in its
political and social reconstruction. As Maram Epstein suggests in her study
of filial sentiment, “taking filial piety seriously,” despite modern paradigms
that predispose scholars to focus on conjugal relations, would allow
Chinese history to be written and read in an entirely different way.16

Filial Piety beyond “Confucianism”

Filial piety is often described as uniquely Chinese or East Asian, but it is
not a distinguishing characteristic of those cultures; nor is it properly
attributed solely to Confucian influence. Most societies emphasize rever-
ence for parents. For example, in the Islamic tradition, the Qur’an
instructs children to show kindness and respect to parents when speaking
to them; and in the hadı̄ th, Heaven is described as at the feet of mothers.17
˙
Jewish laws and ethics feature filial responsibilities, and regard parents
and offspring as bound to each other not only for practical or humanistic
reasons, but also as a way of honoring God.18 “Honor your father and
your mother” (Exodus 20:12) in the Ten Commandments, shared by
Judaism and Christianity, was used by Chinese Christians in the Ming
and Qing periods to justify their practice of ancestral worship.19 Taiping
leaders not only referred to the Ten Commandments to claim filial piety
as the will of God, but they also instructed their followers to display filial
loyalty to a universal God – Heavenly Father.20 “Honor your father and
your mother” was again cited in the last decades of the Qing by prominent
scholar-officials, such as Zhang Zhidong (1837–1909), to argue that the
Westerners upheld the “father–son” cardinal bond just as the Chinese
did.21
Where religious traditions in China were concerned, both Daoism and
Buddhism gave prominence to filial piety in some of their most funda-
mental canons.22 A salient example is the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara,
who was transformed from a handsome prince into the female Guanyin

16
Epstein, Orthodox Passions; citation is from 315.
17
For a comparison between Confucian and Islamic notions of filial love, see Osman bin
Abdullah, Abdul Salam Muhamad Shukri, and Normala Othman, “Filial Piety in
Confucianism and Islam,” especially 141–142.
18
Blidstein, Honor Thy Father and Mother.
19
Mungello, The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou, especially chapter 6, 143–168; and his
The Great Encounter of China and the West, especially chapter 2, 17–52.
20
Kilcourse, Taiping Theology, 125–129.
21
Zhang Zhidong, “Ming Gang” (on three bonds), in his Quan xue pian, 33–36.
22
Ikeda, “The Evolution of the Concept of Filial Piety (xiao) in the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, and
the Guodian Bamboo Texts Yucong”; Lo, “Filial Devotion for Women”; Kohn,
“Immortal Parents and Universal Kin”; Mugitani, “Filial Piety and Authentic Parents
in Religious Daoism.”
 Introduction 9

and widely revered as such in imperial China. According to the popularly

accepted legend, Guanyin was originally Princess Miaoshan who was so
filial that she sacrificed herself for her father, even though her father was
himself both unfilial to his own ancestors and abusive of his children.23
The emphasis on unilateral devotion on the child’s part to the parent can
hardly be explained by Confucian influence alone. In fact, the heavy
weight attached to children’s indebtedness toward parents, especially
mothers, can be attributed to Buddhist discourse to make donations to
the monastery an essential part of debt repayment.24
Scholars of early China noticed that filial piety “has been important in
the Chinese ethos since earliest times.”25 Recent research, based on
archaeological evidence as well as bronze and oracle-bone inscriptions,
suggests that ancestral sacrifices and lineage policies played a critical role
in Shang (ca. 1600–1046 BCE) state politics.26 As Yuri Pines has noted,
prior to Confucius, or the school named after him, filial piety, primarily in
the form of offering sacrifice to deceased ancestors, was one of the core
virtues for rulers and the nobility of the Western Zhou period (1046–771
BCE). Pines treats Confucius and his disciples’ advocacy of filial piety as
both a revival of a previously prominent but recently declining virtue and
a shift from its earlier emphasis on ancestral worship to reverence of living
parents.27 Ding Linghua, based on Lü Simian’s observation, argues that
the pre-Confucian practice of ancestral sacrifice with human or animal
blood (xueshi jisi) deeply influenced the commonly accepted “Confucian”
concern over cutting off one’s patriline.28 This preimperial notion of
sacrifice by male offspring as part of filiality was carried on by the laws
of imperial China.29 It remained alive in vernacular understanding of
parent–child relations long after patrilineal succession was culturally
denounced and property inheritance was legally separated from the
heir’s sacrificial duties.30
Feeding living parents and obeying their instructions were as much part
of filial piety as offering sacrifices to dead ancestors. Keith Knapp attri-
butes the broader meaning of filial piety as both feeding and obeying one’s
23
Idema, trans., Personal Salvation and Filial Piety.
24
Cole, Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism.
25
Holzman, “The Place of Filial Piety in Ancient China”: citation is from 185.
26
Campbell, Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State, especially chapters 5–7, 145–246.
27
Pines, Foundations of Confucian Thought, chapter 6, 165–204.
28
Ding Linghua, Wufu zhidu yu chuantong falü, 305–320.
29
It was widely believed that even though women, as female ancestors, could enjoy sacri-
fices from male offspring, daughters or daughters’ offspring were unable to offer sacrifices
that would be accepted by patrilineal ancestors. As a result, the succession of the male line
was of ultimate importance in terms of one’s filial duties, and an heir had to be adopted
from a man’s agnatic kin if he did not have a son. See Waltner, Getting an Heir.
30
Bernhardt, Women and Property in China, especially chapter 6, 133–160.
10 Introduction

parents to Confucian reinterpretation of the notion of xiao, which origin-

ally had more restricted meanings.31 Geoffrey MacCormack shows that
the oldest sections of Book of Documents (Shangshu), which goes back to
the early Western Zhou period, as well as Confucius’s own words, already
discussed xiao in its full sense. To care for, protect, defer to, and revere
one’s parents while they were living and to remember and sacrifice to
them when they had died was “a value which arguably played an import-
ant role in Western Zhou society, as it did in the Warring States and Han
dynasty.”32 Confucius summarized pre-Confucian notions of filial piety
as follows.
When Fan Chi was driving his carriage for him, the Master said, Meng Sun asked
me about the treatment of parents and I said, Never disobey! Fan Chi said, In
what sense did you mean it? The Master said, While they are alive, serve them
according to ritual. When they die, bury them according to ritual and sacrifice to
them according to ritual.33
Such a view of filial piety, which simultaneously included sacrifice to dead
parents and obedience to and support for living parents, served as the
backbone of normative discourse on parent–child relations by the edu-
cated elite and by the imperial state which later adopted Confucianism as
one of its governing ideologies.34
Keith Knapp connects the popularity of filial piety stories in early
medieval China to the growth of extended families and the triumph of
Confucianism in the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) and following its
fall.35 Pao K. Chao uses Confucius’s words on life and death to launch his
discussion of filial piety and its relationship with ancestral worship.36
When the right/obligation of family members to conceal each other’s
crimes (rongyin) in imperial China recently raised a hot scholarly debate
around filial piety, modern participants in the debate cited and inter-
preted Confucius, Mencius, and later Confucian scholars’ discussions of
concealment in the context of parent–child relations.37 This approach –
exploring filiality and its ritual, moral, and legal implications largely
within a Confucian context – is evident in Kuang-Hui Yeh’s comment:

31
Knapp, “The Ru Interpretation of Xiao.”
32
MacCormack, “Filial Piety (Xiao) and the Family in Pre-Tang Law,” 205–207; citation
is from 207.
33
Waley, trans., The Analects of Confucius, 88–89.
34
Dingxin Zhao theorizes the China-based empire, whose political institutions crystalized
in the Western Han dynasty (202 BCE–9 CE), as a Confucian-Legalist state. See
Dingxin Zhao, The Confucian-Legalist State.
35
Knapp, Selfless Offspring, especially chapter 1, 13–26.
36
Chao, Chinese Culture and Christianity, 18.
37
For the debate, see the entire issues of Contemporary Chinese Thought 39.1 (2007); Dao:
A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 7.1 (2008) and 7.2 (2008).
 Introduction 11

The concept of filial piety contains important rules that children should follow
regarding how they treat their parents and take care of them. It has played a crucial
role in Chinese society through the influence of Confucianism. As the interpret-
ation of Confucian thought has changed over time, so have the implications of
filial piety changed in the context of modern Chinese life.38
Scholars study filial piety largely as a distinctive Confucian political
philosophy or value. This paradigm is a result of the apparent Confucian-
ness of their sources. In imperial China, filiality, or parent–child relations in
general, were largely perceived and expressed – in discourse on morality, on
governance, and on law – through Confucian vocabulary. Hence, when
parental authority and filial piety were under attack in the first half of the
twentieth century, they were denounced as part of the “two thousand-year
reign of Confucian tradition.”39 Confucian, pre-Confucian, and non-
Confucian notions of filial piety were all justified in the name of
Confucianism in imperial China.40 This apparent Confucian-ness displays
the illusion that the prominent place Chinese law and society assigned to the
hierarchy between parents and children was due to “Confucianization” of
Chinese law and society.41 Nevertheless, narrowly focusing on Confucian
prescriptions of filial piety sheds little light on how filiality was understood
and practiced outside high-brow intellectual discourse – in law, in govern-
ance, in popular didactic texts, and in people’s everyday lives.
Qin (221–206 BCE) and early Han laws, which were constructed based
on Legalist principles, included serious punishment for children who
committed what Geoffrey MacCormack terms as “core” offences consti-
tuting buxiao (lack of filial piety): Children were subject to the punish-
ment of beheading if they plotted to kill their parents or were denounced
by their parents as unfilial.42 If they accused their parents in court, their

38
Yeh, “The Beneficial and Harmful Effects of Filial Piety,” 67. For an example of how the
potential of filial piety to serve as a modern virtue is evaluated by tracing early Confucian
conceptualization of filial piety, see Ivanhoe, “Filial Piety as a Virtue.”
39
For how the traditional family order in general and the parent–child hierarchy in particu-
lar were attacked by new culture iconoclasts as part of Confucianism, see Sullivan,
Leadership and Authority in China, 27–29.
40
According to Patricia Ebrey, patrilinealism and its basis – ancestral cult – were very much
pre-Confucian, if not non-Confucian. This is why both patrilinealism and patriarchy
must be studied in their sociopolitical context rather than in the context of Confucianism.
Ebrey, “Women, Marriage, and the Family in Chinese History.”
41
For the scholarly understanding that the expansion of state-sponsored parental authority
in late imperial China was a result of “Confucianization of Chinese law,” see, for
example, Qu, Law and Society in Traditional China, 363–380, especially 378–379.
42
Death by slicing (lingchi chusi) was the standard punishment designated for parricides in
Ming and Qing China. Even though it was sporadically practiced in earlier periods, it was
only during the eleventh century that slicing to death became commonly used as the most
severe penalty in Chinese law. In other words, even though the Qin and Han empires did
not use lingchi to punish rebellious children as the imperial state in later periods did, Qin
12 Introduction

claims would not be accepted. And people who instigated or taught

children to be unfilial would be tattooed and sent to labor.43 The scarcity
of sources prevents scholars from examining in detail how such filial piety
laws were implemented at local levels in early China. But it is clear that
imperial law’s upholding of the principle of filial piety predated the
ascendance of Confucianism to state orthodoxy in the first century
BCE, even though state-sponsored filiality indeed came to be increasingly
articulated in Confucian language in medieval and late imperial China
after the promulgation of the Tang code in 624.44
This book treats the imperial cult of filiality as a state-sponsored project
that, while drawing resources from Confucian rhetoric, had its own logic
that aimed at reinforcing imperial authority through everyday judicial
practice. Departing from existing scholarship that generally locates filiality
within the context of Confucian ethics, I approach state-sponsored filiality
by focusing on its concrete legal mechanisms in the context of state legit-
imation and governance, and on the interaction between state regulation of
parent–child relations and non-state actors’ understandings and negoti-
ations of the law. Geoffrey MacCormack suggests: “‘Confucianization of
the law’ is not a helpful device in explaining the development of the law
from the Ch’in (Qin)/Han to the T’ang (Tang).”45 This statement holds
true for Ming and Qing laws as well.
It is certainly not necessary to discard “Confucianism” as an analytical
category altogether. Rather, Confucianism, and such related terms as
[Confucian] ritual propriety (li) and [Confucian] teaching (jiao), must
be treated as concepts that were constantly reshaped by law, politics, and
vernacular notions despite their purported origins in antiquity. As will be
discussed through analyzing Qing cases in later chapters, the legal mech-
anisms of state-sponsored filiality disseminated the authentic version of
filial piety as defined by the state, which was not always in conformity with
teachings found in Confucian classics. Even in cases where the law
significantly deviated from classic Confucian prescriptions, the rhetoric
of “clarifying law and punishment to assist the [Confucian] Teaching”
(ming xing bi jiao) was maintained. Legal regulation of parent–child rela-
tions and popular didactic texts that promoted filial notions similar to
what the law prescribed had a more direct influence than canonical texts
on how people on the ground perceived the normative intergenerational

and Han laws assigned the most severe punishment possible at the time – beheading – to
parricides.
43
MacCormack, “Filial Piety (Xiao) and the Family in Pre-Tang Law.”
44
MacCormack, “A Reassessment of the ‘Confucianization of the Law’ from the Han to the
T’ang.”
45
Ibid., 442.
 Introduction 13

hierarchy. Thus, looking at legal and social practice on the ground, as this
book does, is more effective in studying generational order in late imperial
China than discussing filial piety primarily within a Confucian context. In
fact, a close study of state-sponsored filiality without largely dwelling on
classical political and moral philosophy made it possible for this book to
address some of the core questions in Chinese legal and cultural history:
What was the relationship between ritual propriety (li) and law (fa) in late
imperial China? How did the imperial state in China tailor and remake
Confucianism for its own rule? What were the dynamics between
reformed law, evolving morality, and changing social customs in the
twentieth century? How did the symbiotic relationship between family
norms and state building affect radical political and cultural movements
in modern China?

A National History with Local Perspectives

This book approaches long-term historical changes through examining
daily interactions between state and society. Its main concern, as outlined
previously, is how the imperial cult of filiality shaped China’s transform-
ation from empire to nation-state. Such an epic reconfiguration was
perceived and experienced rather differently by empire and nation-state
builders who tried to manage and use family relations from above and by
men and women on the ground who engaged and negotiated the system in
their everyday lives. Even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
during which legally sanctioned filiality remained structurally stable des-
pite various developments, Wang Dacai, the father in the 1815 case cited
here, understood the nature of his parental power in a way not totally
adherent to legal prescription. The discrepancy between state adminis-
tration and social production of justice became much more pronounced
as the twentieth-century state in China toppled the parent–child hier-
archy. And the history of state-sponsored filiality may look very different
from a national or central perspective than from local perspectives.
Law, the tool for the state to reach into society and for local actors to
negotiate with the state, makes it possible for this study to present neither
a solely politico-cultural history on elite views nor a solely social history on
subaltern agency, but a history that integrates national and local perspec-
tives. Law worked to shape and reshape society through persuasion as
well as coercion. Force worked best where it was in alliance with human
initiative. The state allied with certain segments of the population against
the rest in its efforts to shape social structure and people’s behavior. Such
a legal maneuvering helped the China-based empire achieve its political
goal of layered but effective governance as imperial law was generally in
14 Introduction

conformity with social convictions. By contrast, reformist law in the

twentieth century subverted social expectations, adding confusion and
uncertainty to a society already pained by domestic turmoil and foreign
invasions. Regardless, law did and does affect the deep-seated and slow-
moving shifts that have occurred in popular mentalities. And legal cases
helped me illustrate structural changes in China’s empire-to-nation trans-
formation with a vivid narrative of people’s lives and struggles.
To make this book a national history with local perspectives, I traveled
widely and collected materials from national archives as well as various
municipal and county-level archives. Many of these archives are only
recently available to scholars in China and abroad. Due to limited
space, most cases in this book are presented in the form of case summary
rather than translation. But many of the words and expressions from the
litigants, suspects, witnesses, and judicial officials are incorporated into
the narratives, so that the readers will have access to historical actors’
voices, logic, and social surroundings.
My discussion of Qing law’s regulation of parent–child relations is
based on both the Great Qing Code and case records preserved in the
Routine Memorials of the Board of Punishments and published case books,
such as A Conspectus of Judicial Cases (Xing’an Huilan). County-level
archives from the Qing period that are consulted include archives in Ba
county (in present-day Chongqing, Southwest China), Nanbu county (in
present-day Sichuan, Southwest China), Baodi county (in present-day
Tianjin, North China), Shuntian prefecture (in present-day Beijing,
North China), and Shuangcheng subprefecture (in present-day
Heilongjiang, Northeast China).46 The locales I have selected vary in
terms of both geography and economy, with Ba county being a flourishing
commercial center in China proper and Shuangcheng subprefecture
a frontier rural setting with a mixed Manchu and Han population. But
they present a striking similarity with one another where state-sponsored
filiality is concerned. The similar ways in which magistrates from different
counties handled cases involving parent–child relations, such as beating
and canguing rebellious sons at the county hall (yamen) upon parental
request, can be attributed to the magistrates’ general adherence to the

46
I would like to examine in detail Qing county-level archives from Southeast China. But
the Longquan county archives, the only relatively well-preserved county-level archives
from the Yangtze River delta that are available for Qing historians, contain a very limited
number of cases from the Qing period, and thus are unable to offer me substantial insights
into the local situations in terms of the legal mechanisms of state-sponsored filiality. For
the Qing-period cases from the Longquan archives, most of which were from the 1890s
and 1900s, see Bao Weimin, Wu Zhengqiang, and Du Zhengzhen, Longquan si fa dang an
xuan bian (Wan Qing shi qi). For the history and demographics of Shuangcheng, see
Shuang Chen, State-Sponsored Inequality, especially chapter 2, 33–60.
 Introduction 15

uniform code and legal procedure across the empire. The similar ways in
which people on the ground took advantage of the system, such as
committing filicide for the purpose of fabricating false accusations, were
due to, I believe, the ways in which law constituted society: Law had an
effect on society not primarily through oppressing people’s agency but by
circumventing people’s ability to choose and by limiting their options.
When people used the dominant system to advance their perceived inter-
ests, they consolidated the very hierarchies that subjugated them, and
they allowed the system to mold their behavior and beliefs.
Central archives from the Republican era have become increasingly less
accessible in the last decade. But published sources, especially published
collections of supreme- and superior-court cases, enable me to flesh out
how the reforms as reflected in the codes and supreme court judicial
interpretations materialized, or failed to do so, in judicial practice at
various levels of courts of appeals. Considering the possible gap between
legal practice and culture in major metropolitan centers and the country-
side, I base my narratives of local situations during the Republic on cases
from both urban and rural areas: Court and police cases from the Beijing
Municipal Archives and the Shanghai Municipal Archives provide basis
for my analysis of the changing relationship between parent and child as
practiced in the cities in interaction with state-initiated reforms.47 Court
cases from Jiangjin county (in present-day Chongqing, Southwest China)
and Longquan county (in present-day Zhejiang, Southeast China) are
used to investigate generational relations in rural China during the first
half of the twentieth century.48 Jiangjin bordered one of my source bases
for the Qing period – Ba county – making comparison possible between
Qing and Republican situations in roughly the same region.
This study claims no representation of the legal cases it discusses. The
limitation of my approach is partly caused by the difficulty in generalization
47
As scholars have noted, the Japanese-controlled collaborationist regimes continued to
use the Nationalist codes; police policies toward family relations saw little change except
for those involving state security and control of population; see Ma, Runaway Wives,
Urban Crimes, and Survival Tactics in Wartime Beijing. As a result, where court and police
cases from Beijing and Shanghai are concerned, I treat the Nationalist legal regime as
a continuous one that lasted from 1928 until 1949. For the readers’ convenience,
“Beijing” is used in this book to refer to present-day Beijing municipality, even though
the official name of the city was Beiping between 1928 and 1937, and again between 1945
and 1949.
48
Longquan, though geographically located in the Yangtze River delta, bordered the
mountainous Fujian, and was itself a rural area relatively isolated from major metropol-
itan centers. For Longquan county archives, see Du Zhengzhen and Wu Zhengqian,
“Longquan sifa dang’an de zhuyao tedian yu shiliao jiazhi.” Longquan was under
Nationalist control during the entire Second Sino-Japanese War despite its geographical
proximity to Nanjing, the seat of the central collaborationist regime established in 1940
under Japanese sponsorship.
16 Introduction

for the large and diverse Qing empire and its Republican successor. In
addition, the long chronological coverage of this book makes it impractical
to collect a statistically meaningful number of cases for any single group of
cases under discussion. For some categories, such as filicide in the Qing,
the victims’ parents routinely made efforts to cover things up with conniv-
ance from judicial officials, limiting the number of cases the author-
detective can identify to a dozen. Even for better-categorized cases that
are easier to find, such as those involving child abuse in the twentieth
century, only selected examples are discussed in detail so as to streamline
the narrative. No less importantly, court and police cases are wonderful
sources for historical inquiry, but they were state documents that were
exceptional in nature. This book has to leave out not only people who
participated in practices that fell outside the radar of the heteronormative
state but also completely “normal” behavior that warranted no state inter-
vention. To borrow concepts from microhistory, the extraordinary cases
examined in this book are “exceptional normal,” enabling me to flesh out
widely based social practice and deep cultural formation, and by doing so,
to connect the particular with historical trends.49

Chapter Overview
Before turning to legal reforms that triggered a dramatic transformation
of parent–child relations in the first half of twentieth century, the narrative
of this book starts from the Qing period when state law supported the
hierarchical relationship between parents and children with its full weight
and when the law defined the very existence of children in the context of
the unlimited debt they owed their parents. Part I, “Ruling the Empire
through the Principle of Filiality,” focuses on the relationship between the
parent–child hierarchy and the ruler–subject hierarchy in the last dynasty
of China – the Qing. Resembling and reinforcing one another in logic and
functionality, parent–child and ruler–subject relations together formed
the axis of power dynamics that facilitated the penetration of imperial
authority to society through not merely ideological indoctrination but
also judicial practice in support of parental authority in the everyday.
Chapter 1, “‘Parents Can Never Be Wrong’: Punishing Rebellious
Children as a Didactic Show,” examines three instances of Qing law
that humiliated, tormented, or executed rebellious children as a public
performance that identified imperial authority with “infallible” parental
authority: (1) mandatory concealment of parents’ crimes; (2) court assist-
ance to parents in disciplining their grown-up sons in the form of beating,

49
Peltonen, “Clues, Margins, and Monads.”
 Introduction 17

canguing, or exile; and (3) executing parricides by dismemberment under

the imperial insignia in summary executions. The same message was
conveyed in various forms of public punishment of unfilial children:
Right and wrong was a matter of position, and parental instructions
demanded unquestioning obedience.
Chapter 2, “Policies and Counterstrategies: Negotiating State-
Sponsored Filiality in the Everyday,” explores how local actors exploited
legally sanctioned filiality to advance their perceived interests in court:
Widowed mothers monopolized property of households legally headed by
their grown-up sons; parents in difficult economic situations killed their
small children to frame their creditors, with the understanding that
imperial law assigned little weight to filicide; people resorted to false
accusations of lack of filial piety to kick-start their cases or to incriminate
their adversaries. The Qing state tolerated or even connived at such local
manipulations, despite significant administrative costs and compromise
of other established legal and moral principles. Such tolerance enabled
the state to co-opt local actors’ initiative to shape society and reinforce
normative notions of parent–child relations.
Chapter 3, “‘Parenting All under Heaven on Behalf of Heaven’: State-
Sponsored Filiality and Imperial Rulership,” shows how the legal mech-
anisms of state-sponsored filiality integrated with Qing political order.
The notion of “parental infallibility” materialized in imperial politics as
the logic of attributing power and merit to the emperor and the magistrate
who “parented the people,” and liabilities to children-subjects. The prin-
ciple of “united under the most revered” allowed the empire to effectively
organize a top-down chain of delegating parental authority from Heaven,
the ultimate father, and to channel political loyalty upward. Filial inequal-
ity, which was duplicable for various levels of bureaucratic and familial
authorities, appealed to the emotional attachment between parent and
child, especially mother and child, to naturalize political and social hier-
archies of almost all kinds. These mechanisms operated correspondingly
in li (rites and prescribed moral codes) and fa (law), not because Chinese
law was “Confucianized” or “ritualized,” but because both li and fa were
molded and instrumentalized to meet the need of the imperial state.
Changes between the Ming and the Qing or development during the
course of the Qing are discussed when examining specific legal institutions.
But overly detailed analysis of such changes is avoided as changes in degree
within late imperial China were moderate in comparison to the fundamen-
tal transformation legal and social orders witnessed in twentieth-century
China. Similarly, tensions and instabilities of the late imperial politico-legal
order are shown throughout the narrative of this book, in actions and words
of commoners and officials alike. But such discontent brought about an
18 Introduction

alternate system of family and government organization only when China

strove to leave behind its imperial past in the modern era.
Part II, “Building the Nation through Restructuring the Family,”
studies the process of reforming the ideology and socio-legal institutions
concerning state-sponsored filiality as a central problem for the twentieth-
century state in China. Aiming to strengthen China’s military and eco-
nomic power through subjecting every citizen to direct state control, the
modernizing state supervised increasingly radical legal reforms to under-
mine parental power so as to separate individual citizens from family
authority.
Chapter 4, “Reorienting Parent–Child Relations: From Parents’
Authority to Children’s Rights,” provides an overview of how early
Republican (1912–28) and Nationalist (1928–49) criminal and civil
codes changed the focus of parent–child relations. Republican criminal
law maintained some parental privileges in an attenuated manner where
children’s physical offense against parents was concerned. At the same
time, the Republican court and law enforcement reprimanded and pun-
ished abusive or irresponsible parents, and occasionally took away minor
children from parents who were deemed disqualified upon neighbors’
reports. Republican law also removed the label of filial rebellion from
children’s accusation of parents, supporting children’s defense of their
interests in defiance of parents. The Republican state’s exercise of parens
patriae over minors and its endorsement of adult children’s challenge of
parental authority indicate a new understanding of children primarily as
rights-bearing citizens whose defining relationship was with the state, not
with parents.
Chapter 5, “Reconceptualizing Parent–Child Relations: From Lifelong
Parental Privilege to Transitory Guardianship,” centers around the con-
cept of legal majority that distinguished not only adults from minors but
also Republican law that honored such differentiation from Qing law that
upheld parental control over grown-up and minor children alike.
Marriage, which had once been conceived as a relationship arranged by
parents to continue ancestral worship, was redefined as a union formed by
and between mature men and women for the purpose of raising minor
children to achieve autonomous adulthood. Parents’ lifelong custodial
rights over property and labor of their children were replaced by
a maintenance regime which entitled aged parents to request financial
support, but which prioritized adult sons’ and daughters’ needs over
parental demands.
Chapter 6, “A Constitutional Agenda: Remaking the Family to Make
a New State,” traces the logic beneath state-sponsored reconfiguration of
family order in general, and generational relations in particular, within the
 Introduction 19

context of China’s constitutional transformation in the first half of the

twentieth century. Within a few decades, an empire that “ruled through
the principle of filiality” became a modern republic that denounced the
father–son cardinal bond in power succession and abandoned gener-
ational hierarchies in laws. Social practice on the ground witnessed grad-
ual and uneven changes, but state builders, from late Qing legal reformers
to Nationalist lawmakers, persisted in the statist direction they designed
for China, in the hope of atomizing individual citizens as the first step to
connect them directly to the state. In the short term, this legally imple-
mented family revolution obstructed the formation of a stable political
order as it accelerated social disintegration. In the long run, the building
of a new ideology accompanied by new socio-legal mechanisms laid the
foundation for the rebirth of China as a modern state that operated on
a logic of governance entirely different from that of the empire.
Family reform carried out under Republican rule paved the way for the
Communist regime that legitimized itself and governed its citizens at the
expense of rather than in conformity with familial solidarity. China’s twen-
tieth-century anti-filial-piety movement culminated during the Cultural
Revolution (1966–76), when the youths were encouraged or even forced
to report on and struggle against their parents for a greater cause. Such an
excessively violent approach toward parental authority amidst a general
breakdown of social order paradoxically strengthened family ties, marking
the beginning of an end of family revolution in China. Gradually recovering
in society since the 1980s, filial piety is undergoing a state-sponsored revival
in the twenty-first century, as the current Chinese government is turning
away from Maoist anti-family iconoclasm in favor of traditional values
reformulated in service of the postcommunist state.50 The afterlife of
state regulation of generational relations in China since 1949, discussed
in the Conclusion, raises a question that might not be readily answerable
until a few decades into the future: Does the restoration of an ethical
regime – informed by filial respect as an analogy to political submission –
signify the coming of full circle, a fate traditionally assigned to revolutions?

50
For Xi Jinping’s recent speeches in promotion of filiality, see www.xinhuanet.com/polit
ics/2018-10/13/c_1123554642.htm. Accessed November 27, 2020. For the CCTV’s
program on filial obedience toward the state, see CCTV, “Xinwen sanshifen” (News
thirty minutes), CCTV online video, 24:52, February 11, 2016, http://tv.cntv.cn/video/
C10601/fee3d1149bdc47daa2be821e45c3a91d. Accessed November 27, 2020.
Part I

Ruling the Empire through the Principle

of Filiality
1 “Parents Can Never Be Wrong”
Punishing Rebellious Children as a Didactic Show

In late 1821, Jiang Qishun from Longli county of Guizhou province

coerced (bixie) his daughter-in-law Jiang Yuan Shi into incestuous inter-
course. They “renewed their affair” (xujian) once afterwards. Jiang
Qishun’s son became aware of this sexual liaison when he ran into
a flirtatious chat between his father and his wife. He forced his wife into
admitting guilt, beat her, and moved with her to a separate residence. He
threatened his wife that he would kill her if he once more found her having
intercourse with his father. He did not dare to report the incident to the
authorities, however. From that time on, Jiang Yuan Shi repented (hui-
guo), and refused to see her father-in-law (bi bu jianmian).
To remove the thorn from his side, Jiang Qishun arranged for five men
to forcibly take his son to the county court so that he could have his son
punished for rebellious behavior. Jiang Qishun’s son resisted arrest and
died from his injuries. His death was reported to the authorities by Jiang
Qishun as a death in affray committed by an unknown party. After Jiang
Yuan Shi overheard her father-in-law drunkenly confessing that he had
orchestrated her husband’s death to facilitate further sexual contact with
her, she killed him to vent her hatred. She tried to hang herself to avoid
punishment, but she was saved by her neighbors. Eventually, Jiang Yuan
Shi was sentenced to beheading without delay to punish her for parricide
and incest, one degree reduced from slicing to death in public, the
punishment originally designated for parricides.1
This case, though ending dramatically with a daughter-in-law being
executed for her intentional killing of her incestuous father-in-law, reveals
more than the conflicting demands Qing society and law placed on
daughters-in-law when they faced sexual advances or rape from their
fathers-in-law. “The oppression of women in Qing society and within
the family structure,” as Vivien Ng puts it, must be understood in a larger
socio-legal framework that included generational order as well as gender
1
The summary of this case is based on ZPZZ, no.04–01–26–0044–009, no.04–01–26–
0044–010; LFZZ, no.03–3839–027. For Vivien Ng’s discussion of this case, heavily
focusing on women’s agency and status in the patriarchal family, see her “Sexual Abuse
of Daughters-in-Law in Qing China.”

23
24 Ruling the Empire through Principle of Filiality

order. The sequence of events that led to Jiang Yuan Shi’s parricide
clearly shows that neither the daughter-in-law nor the son was capable
of mobilizing any institutional support to resist parental abuse of children.
Avoiding contact was their only option. Conversely, it was the incestuous
Jiang Qishun who was able to avail himself of the Qing legal institutions
designed to promote filiality to silence both his son and his daughter-in-
law. He exploited the institutional setting that, though not explicitly
encouraging parental abuse, left little room for abused sons and daughters
to redress their grievances. Jiang Yuan Shi turned to violent resistance
only as the last resort. Active resistance, such as reporting Jiang Qishun’s
transgression to the authorities, was generally out of her or her husband’s
reach. Passive resistance, such as avoiding coresidence, was circumvented
by the Qing local court that assisted parents in controlling their disobedi-
ent sons. This chapter focuses on both Qing law’s restriction of children’s
challenge of parental authority through litigation and Qing institutional
support of parental dominance through punishing rebellious children.
Incest, an offense listed under the “ten abominations,” was the only
crime for which all involved parties would receive the same punishment –
beheading without delay for close relatives of the second-degree mourn-
ing relation or higher – regardless of their status in the family hierarchy or
their gender.2 An exception was made for women who were able to
provide substantial evidence for their resistance to rape by male relatives.
In this circumstance, only the male rapist would be executed. Jiang
Qishun’s son, however, did not dare to report his father’s sexual trans-
gression to the authorities because Qing law, as will be shown in detail
later in this chapter, demanded a child conceal his/her parent’s crimes and
would punish a child who failed to observe this duty even when the
accusation proved to be true. Equally importantly, Qing law attached
light weight to a child’s testimony against his/her parent. The child’s
testimony was easily dismissed in face of the parent’s counterclaim.
Once proven false, a child’s accusation of his/her parent would lead to
the death penalty for the “rebellious child.” This chapter starts with
Section 1.1, “Concealment as a Filial Duty,” which investigates how
the Confucian notion of family members’ mutual responsibility to

2
DLCY, Article 002.00 and Article 368.01, 18 and 1087. Late imperial Chinese law
determined the closeness of kin according to the ritual mourning obligations related
persons owed each other. Ritual mourning varied from three years (zhancui) to three
months (sima), corresponding to first to fifth degrees of closeness between relatives. The
principle of “determining nature of the crime and designating punishment according to
the kinship as measured in the five mourning system (zhun wufu zhizui)” served as the axis
that connected ritual prescriptions to imperial law since the promulgation of the Tang Code
in 651 (Qu, Law and Society in Traditional China, 7–13).
 “Parents Can Never Be Wrong” 25

conceal one another’s crimes (qinshu xiangwei rongyin) materialized in

Qing judicial practice as children’s unilateral obligation to conceal for
parents.
Without the option of invoking the law to prevent his father from
sexually attacking his wife, Jiang Qishun’s son moved out of his father’s
residence to physically separate his wife from his father. This very action,
however, provided evidence for his lack of filial piety, of which Jiang
Qishun did not fail to take advantage. Jiang Qishun arranged for his son
to be forcibly sent to the county court for discipline, in the process of
which his son died in resistance. Section 1.2, “Punishing Rebellious Sons
at the County Hall,” discusses the judicial service provided by Qing local
courts that allowed parents to send their rebellious sons to the county
court, either to be exiled or to be beaten and publicly cangued locally until
their parents were satisfied with their repentance. In particular, public
canguing offered the magistrate an opportunity to stage a didactic show at
the local level, teaching imperial subjects a lesson about filial obedience
through the prolonged humiliation of rebellious sons.
Both legal institutions concerning children’s obligation to conceal for
parents and parents’ privilege in using the court to discipline children
derived from the presumption that it was impossible for parents to hold ill
intention against their offspring due to the “natural sentiment” (tianxing;
literally, heaven-ordained [human] nature) between parents and chil-
dren. If a parent accused his/her child in court or asked the court to
punish the child, such an action was assumed to have been instigated by
the child’s unfilial behavior. The same presumption explained why par-
ents’ explanation regarding the death of their children was usually
accepted, as exemplified by how easily Jiang Qishun managed to have
his son’s violent death dealt with. But Qing law regulated the parent–child
relationship in an entirely different way when it came to punishing chil-
dren who committed parricide. Section 1.3, “Slicing Parricides under the
Imperial Insignia,” explores how the Qing compromised on its legal
procedures and principles concerning judicial reviews of capital cases to
ensure that parricides would receive the most severe form of penalty
without any of the delay caused by the multilevel judicial review system.
The imperial state would then transform the executions of parricides into
draconian performances that displayed the state’s militarized buttressing
of parental authority.
All the legal institutions discussed in this chapter were designed not
only to deliver justice in the courtroom that demanded filial obedience,
but also to convey the important message to society about how to tell right
from wrong. This chapter concludes with Section 1.4, “Being Obedient,
Being Righteous,” which investigates how Qing legal discourse and
26 Ruling the Empire through Principle of Filiality

judicial practice reconstructed the legal concept “parental instruction”

(jiaoling) by essentially obscuring the codified distinction between appro-
priate parental orders that had to be followed by children and inappropri-
ate ones that were not supposed to be followed. As a Qing magistrate
summarized, not without implication regarding the people’s proper atti-
tude toward himself as the people’s father-mother-official (fumu guan),
“to act righteously is to act obediently” (yi shun wei zheng). Right and
wrong was a matter of position rather than one of abstract moral prin-
ciples. Parents were infallible for their children. Parental instructions
were to be followed regardless of whether or not they were in conformity
with parents’ own moral obligations toward their children or community
members.

1.1 Concealment as a Filial Duty

The Chinese legal notion of “mutual concealment of wrongdoings by
relatives” (qinshu xiang wei rongyin, usually abridged as rongyin in the Qing
legal context) originated from what Confucius said about righteousness:
“A father will screen his son (fu wei zi yin), and a son his father (zi wei fu
yin) – uprightness lies therein (zhi zai qi zhong).”3 Concealing crimes for
unrelated persons or facilitating their escape was a punishable crime
under Qing law. But Qing law allowed close relatives of the third-degree
mourning relationship or higher, or coresiding relatives regardless of the
closeness of their mourning relationship, to conceal one another’s crimes
from the authorities. Relatives were also exempt from punishment if they
informed the wanted person in order to facilitate his/her flight when the
authorities were conducting a search.4 In judicial practice, this statute
materialized into the privilege that one was allowed to decline to testify
against one’s close or coresiding relatives, especially one’s parents. At the
same time, Qing law rewarded those who sacrificed their “natural human
sentiment” (tianxing) in the service of public good by reducing the pun-
ishments meted to the convicted whose crimes were reported to the
authorities by their relatives. The accused relative, if he/she was a close
relative of the person who made the report, would be exempted from
punishment as if he/she had voluntarily confessed.5 If the accused was
3
Waley, trans., The Analects of Confucius, 176. The last clause is translated by Waley as
“which incidentally does involve a sort of uprightness.” I adjusted Waley’s translation to
better convey the meaning of the clause in classical Chinese.
4
DLCY, Article 032.00, 131.
5
When a person was “exempted from punishment as if one had voluntarily surrendered to
the authorities” (yi/zhao zishou lü mianzui), it meant no punishment at all only when no
violence had occurred and restitution could be made. If irreparable injury (such as
disability) or death had been inflicted, “exemption from punishment as if one had
 “Parents Can Never Be Wrong” 27

a distant relative of the person who made the report, the accused would
receive a punishment one to three degrees reduced from the penalty
originally designed for the crime committed.6
The privilege to conceal one’s relatives’ crimes without being punished
was designed, in theory, as a recognition and protection of mutual intim-
acy between family members (qin qin) – the cornerstone of Confucian
benevolence (ren).7 Nevertheless, rongyin cannot be treated in the Qing
legal context merely as evidence of the triumph of Confucian humanitar-
ianism in the late imperial period. In its classical sense, rongyin, “mutual
concealment of wrongdoings by relatives,” fails to offer a satisfying
explanation for why, for instance in the 1821 case cited at the beginning
of this chapter, Jiang Qishun had no problem accusing his son in court,
which indirectly resulted in his son’s death, while Jiang Qishun’s son did
not even dare to say anything about his father’s incest. Furthermore, Jiang
Qishun apparently was not worried about the possibility that his son, if
sent to the county court for discipline, would reveal the father’s incest.
While giving a senior relative the privilege to conceal a junior relative’s
wrongdoing without being punished, a junior relative had the obligation
to conceal a senior relative’s crime. If a grandchild or child brought an
accusation to the court against his/her paternal grandparent or parent, the
accuser would be sentenced to three years of penal servitude plus 100
strokes of beating by the heavy bamboo stick even if the accusation proved
to be true. If a junior relative brought a well-founded accusation against
other senior relatives, the accuser would receive 70 to 100 strokes of
beating by the heavy bamboo stick, depending on the closeness of their
mourning relations. Qing law’s differential treatment of parents and
collateral senior relatives in the context of concealment was reflected
not merely by the penalty for which junior relatives were liable. Junior
relatives were obliged to conceal their collateral senior relatives’ crimes
only when the victims were people other than themselves; junior relatives
would be exempted from punishment if they brought official attention to
cases in which their collateral relatives wrongfully offended them. But
such an exemption was not applicable to parents and paternal grandpar-
ents. Children were obligated to conceal for their parents even when they
themselves were victims.8
By sending his son to the county court for discipline, Jiang Qishun
simply declined his privilege to conceal his son’s “rebellious behavior.”
For Jiang Qishun’s son and daughter-in-law, however, it was their filial

voluntarily surrendered” meant a punishment reduced several degrees from the punish-
ment originally assigned for the crime (Conner, “True Confessions?”).
6
DLCY, Article 337.00, 1013. 7 Lau, trans., Mencius, 290–293, 306–309.
8
DLCY, Article 337.00, 1013.
Other documents randomly have
different content
breach of ethics. The Englishman’s unvarnished candour in airing his
private affairs appears to the Latin as crass and unnecessary; while
in the Englishwoman it becomes to him positively repellent. The
difference, throughout, in the two races, is the difference between
the masculine and the feminine points of view. England is ever and
always a man’s country. Even the women look at things through the
masculine vision, and to an extent share the masculine prerogatives.
As long as a woman’s husband accepts what she does, everyone
accepts her; which explains how in the country where women are
clamouring most frantically for equal privileges, a great number of
women enjoy privileges unheard of by their “free” sisters of other
lands.

Underwood & Underwood

LONDON, THE EMPIRE CAPITAL

It is a question of position, not of sex; and harks back—moral
privilege, I mean—to that core of all English institutions: breeding.
There are no bounds to the latitude allowed the great, though it
does not seem to occur to the non-great that such license in itself
brings into question the rights of many who hold old names and
ancient titles. Succession, that all-important factor of the whole
social system, is hedged about with many an interrogation point;
which society is pleased to ignore, nevertheless, on the ground of
noblesse oblige! Above a certain stratum, the English calmly
dispense with logic, and bestow divine rights on all men alike;
obviously it is the only thing to do, and besides it confers divine
obligations at the same time.
One must say for all Englishmen that rarely if ever, in their
personal liberty, do they lose sight of their obligations. In the midst
of after-dinner hilarity, one will see a club-room empty as if by
magic, and the members hurry away in taxis or their own
limousines. One knows that a division is to be called for, and that it
wants perhaps ten minutes of the hour. The same thing happens at
balls or almost any social function: the men never fail to attend
when they can, for they are distinctly social creatures; but they keep
a quiet eye on the clock, and slip out when duty calls them
elsewhere. This serves two excellent purposes: of preventing brain-
fag among the “big” men of the hour, and leading the zest of their
interests and often great undertakings to society—which in many
countries never sees them.
In England politics and society are far more closely allied than in
America or on the Continent. Each takes colour from the other, and
becomes more significant thereby. The fact of a person’s being born
to great wealth and position, instead of turning him into an idle
spendthrift, compels his taking an important part in the affairs of the
country. The average English peer is about as hard-working a man
as can be found, unless it be the King himself; and the average
English hostess, far from being a butterfly of pleasure, has a round
of duties as exacting as those of the Prime Minister. Through all the
delightful superficial intercourse of a London season, there is an
undercurrent of serious purpose, felt and shared by everyone,
though by each one differently.
 At luncheons, dinners, garden-parties and receptions the talk
veers sooner or later towards politics and national affairs. All “sets,”
the fashionable, the artistic, the sporting, the adventurous, as well
as the politicians themselves, meet and become absorbed in last
night’s debate or the Bill to come up for its third reading tomorrow.
By the way, for a foreigner to participate in these bouts of keen
discussion, he must become addicted to the national habit: before
going anywhere, he must read the Times.
As regularly as he takes his early cup of tea, every self-
respecting Englishman after breakfast retires into a corner with the
Times, and never emerges until he has masticated the last
paragraph. Then and only then is he ready to go forth for the day,
properly equipped to do battle. And he speedily discovers if you are
not similarly prepared—and beats you. Of all the characteristic
English things I can think of, none is so English as the Times. In it
you find, besides full reports of political proceedings and the usual
births, marriages, and deaths, letters from Englishmen all the way
from Halifax to Singapore. Letters on the incapacity of American
servants, the best method of breeding Angora cats, the water
system of the Javanese (have they any?), how to travel comfortably
in Cochin China, the abominable manners of German policemen, the
dangers of eating lettuce in Palestine, etc., etc. Signals are raised to
all Englishmen everywhere, warning them what to do and what to
leave undone, and how they shall accomplish both. Column upon
column of the conservative old newspaper is devoted to this sort of
correspondence club, which has for its motto that English classic:
prevention, to avoid necessity for cure.
The Englishman at home reads it all, carefully, together with the
answers to the correspondents of yesterday, the interminable speech
of Lord X in the Upper House last night, the latest bulletins
concerning the health of the Duchess of Y. It is solid, unsensational
mental food, and he digests it thoroughly; storing it away for
practical future use. But the foreigner, accustomed to the high
seasoning of journalistic epigram and the tang of scandal, finds it
very dull. Unfortunately, the mission of the newspaper in most
countries has become the promoting of a certain group of men, or a
certain party, or a certain cause, and the damning of every other
man or party or cause that stands in the way. The English press has
none of this flavour. It is imbued with the national instinct for fair
play, which, while it by no means prohibits lively discussion of men
and measures, remains strictly impersonal in its attitude of attack.
The critic on the whole is inclined to deserve his title as it was
originally defined; one who judges impartially, according to merit. He
is a critic of men and affairs, however, rather than of art. He lives
too much in the open to give himself extensively to artistic study or
creation. And Englishmen have, generally speaking, distinguished
themselves as fighters, explorers, soldiers of fortune, and as
organizers and statesmen, rather than as musicians, painters, and
men of letters.
Especially in the present day is this true. There are the Scots and
Shackletons, the Kitcheners, Roberts, and Curzons; but where are
the Merediths, Brownings, Turners, and Gainsboroughs? Literature is
rather better off than the other arts—there is an occasional Wells or
Bennett among the host of the merely talented and painstaking;
more than an occasional novelist among the host of fictioneers. But
poets are few and uneventful, playwrights more abundant though
tinged with the charlatanism of the age; while as for the painters,
sculptors and composers, in other countries the protagonists of the
peculiar violence and revolution of today—in England, who are they?
 Underwood & Underwood

THE GREAT ISLAND SITE

We go to exhibitions by the dozen, during the season, and listen
conscientiously to the latest tenor; but seldom do we see art or hear
music. In the past, the great English artists have been those who
painted portraits, landscapes, or animals; reproducing out of
experience the men and women, horses, dogs, and out-of-doors
they knew so well; rather than creating out of imagination dramatic
scenes and pictures of the struggle and splendour of life. Their art
has been a peaceful art, the complement rather than the mirror of
the heroic militancy that always has dominated English activity.
Similarly, the musicians—the few that have existed—have surpassed
in compositions of the sober, stately order, oratorios, chorals, hymns
and solemn marches. Obviously, peace and solemnity are
incongruous with the restless, rushing spirit of today, to which the
Englishman is victim together with all men, but which, with his
slower articulation, he is not able to express on canvas or in
chromatics.
 Cubism terrifies him; on the other hand he is, for the moment at
least, insanely intrigued by ragtime. The hoary ballad, which “Mr.
Percy Periwell will sing this day at Southsea Pier,” is giving way at
last to syncopated ditties which form a mere accompaniment to the
reigning passion for jigging. No one has time to listen to singing;
everyone must keep moving, as fast and furiously as he can. There
is a spice of tragi-comedy in watching the mad wave hit sedate old
London, sweeping her off her feet and into a maze of frantically
risqué contortions. Court edicts, the indignation of conservative
dowagers, the severity of bishops and the press—nothing can stop
her; from Cabinet ministers to house-maids, from débutantes to
duchesses, “everybody’s doing it,” with vim if not with grace. And
such is the craze for dancing, morning, noon and night, that every
other room one enters has the aspect of a salle de bal—chairs and
sofas stiff against the walls, a piano at one end, and, for the rest,
shining parquetry.
Looking in at one of these desecrated drawing-rooms, where at
the moment a peer of the realm was teaching a marchioness to
turkey-trot, a lady of the old order wished to know “What, what
would Queen Victoria say?”
“Madam,” replied her escort, also of the epoch of square dances
and the genteel crinoline, “the late Queen was above all things else
a gentlewoman. She had no language with which to describe the
present civilization!”
It is not a pretty civilization, surely; it is even in many ways a
profane one. Yet in its very profanities there is a force, a tremendous
and splendid vitality, that in the essence of it must bring about
unheard-of and glorious things. Our sentimentalism rebels against
motor-buses in Park Lane, honking taxis eliminating the discreet
hansom of more leisurely years; we await with mingled awe and
horror the day just dawning, when the sky itself will be cluttered
with whizzing, whirring vehicles. But give us the chance to go back
and be rid of these things—who would do it?
 Underwood & Underwood

LINKING THE NEW ERA AND THE OLD

As a matter of fact, we have long since crossed from the
sentimental to the practical. We are desperately, fanatically practical
in these days; we want all we can get, and as an afterthought hope
that it will benefit us when we get it. England has caught the spirit
less rapidly than many of the nations, but she has caught it. No
longer does she smile superciliously at her colonies; she wants all
that they can give her. Far from ignoring them, she is using every
scheme to get in touch; witness the Island Site and the colonial
offices fast going up on that great tract of land beyond Kingsway. No
longer does she sniff at her American cousins, but anxiously looks to
their support in the slack summer season, and has everything
marked with dollar-signs beforehand! Since the Entente Cordiale,
too, she throws wide her doors to her neighbours from over the
Channel: let everyone come, who in any way can aid the old island
kingdom to realize its new ideal of a great Empire federation.
Doctor Johnson’s assertion that “all foreigners are mostly fools,”
may have been the opinion of Doctor Johnson’s day; it is out-of-date
in the present. English standards are as exacting, English judgments
as strict, as ever they were; but to those who measure up to them,
whatever their race or previous history, generous appreciation is
given. And I know of no land where the reformer, the scientist, the
philosopher—the man with a message of any kind—is granted fairer
hearing or more just reward; always provided his wares are trade-
marked genuine.
“Nonsense of enthusiasts is very different from nonsense of
ninnies,” was the conclusion of one of the wisest Englishmen who
ever lived. And the critical country has adopted it as a slogan;
writing across the reverse side of her banner: “Freedom and fair play
for all men.”
THE END
 Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made
consistent when a predominant preference was found in the
original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious,
and otherwise left unbalanced.
Illustrations in this eBook have been positioned between
paragraphs and outside quotations. In versions of this eBook
that support hyperlinks, the page references in the List of
Illustrations lead to the corresponding illustrations.
Page 32: “cabaret in American” was printed that way; perhaps
should be “America”.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MECCAS OF
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