Conquer Club

According to Chinese tradition, filial piety (hsiao) was the primary duty of all Chinese. Being a filial son meant complete obedience to one's parents during their lifetime and--as they grew older--taking the best possible care of them.

During the time of the Chou Dynasty (11th-3rd Century BCE), there was a man named Lao Lai-tzu who was by nature extremely filial. He took care of both his parents and provided for them with the choicest delicacies. After he himself turned seventy, he never spoke about his age. He often wore clothes striped in five colors and acted like an infant in front of his parents. He would carry a bowl of water to them, and then stumble on purpose. Lying on the floor he would cry like a little child in order to make his parents laugh.

http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/F ... ilial1.htm

BEIJING — Kleenex in hand, the retired farmer in the purple plaid shirt perched behind the plaintiff's table in a rural courtroom and wept as she complained to the judge about her eldest son.

For the last year and a half, 78-year-old Li Lanyu said, she's been asking him to visit and provide her with grain and cooking oil. "The son has forgotten the mother!" she shouted, burying her face in her hands.

Her son wasn't there to defend himself. Although he tends a plot of land, he leaves for weeks at a time to toil as a construction worker hundreds of miles away. His wife and daughter told the judge he earns just $166 a month. Visiting more often was possible, the daughter said, but they could afford only a fraction of the food the grandmother wanted.

Until recently, Li Wanglun, 60, may have been a disappointment, even an embarrassment, to his mother in a country where the 2,500-year-old Confucian ideal of filial piety still runs deep. Now, though, he may also be a lawbreaker: A new national statute took effect July 1 mandating that family members attend to the spiritual needs of the elderly and visit them "often" if they live apart.

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There was no immediate ruling in Li's lawsuit, which was heard this month and widely reported in the Chinese media. It was the first such case to come before a court in Sichuan province. Cases also have been brought in Henan and Jiangsu provinces. In the latter, a judge ordered a woman to visit her 77-year-old mother every two months and on major holidays.