Yes, Lao Tzu / Laozi.
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.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/29 ... w-20130729
