Confucian And Family Values To Chinese

2016-01-28  Source: GlobalPartnersMBA.com

Author: Today is the only free day we have in Beijing. I finally got chance to spend a little more time with my dad. We had lunch at his favorite restaurant. Then he took me to see my grandparents. It’s always feel good to come back home and to be with my family. I enjoy every moment of the gathering with my family. And I think it is a good time to talk about  value of family to Chinese a little bit.

More and more families are adapting to western culture by incorporating certain western values into their lifestyles while maintain core traditional Chinese beliefs that they believe are extremely important. Chinese parents nowadays are giving children more freedom, as opposed to strictly supervising children as ancient Chinese families did.  We are becoming more individualistic and less dependent on the family, again very different from the historical Chinese family.  While family members are becoming more individualistic, the Chinese family still retains the value that family is an important part of a person’s life.

In Confucian thought, family values, familial relationships, ancestor worship, and filial piety are the primary basis of the philosophical system, and these concepts are seen as virtues to be cultivated.

Filial piety is considered the first virtue in Chinese culture. While China has always had a diversity of religious beliefs, filial piety has been common to almost all of them; for example, Historian Hugh D. R. Baker calls respect for the family the only element common to almost all Chinese believers. These traditions were sometimes enforced by law; during parts of the Han Dynasty, for example, those who neglected ancestor worship could even be subject to corporal punishment.

The term “filial”, meaning “of a child”, denotes the respect and obedience that a child, originally a son, should show to his parents, especially to his father. This relationship was extended by analogy to a series of five relationships or five cardinal relationships (五倫 Wǔlún): 1.ruler and subject (君臣), 2.father and son (父子), 3.husband and wife (夫婦), 4.elder and younger brother (兄弟), 5.friend and friend (朋友)

Specific duties were prescribed to each of the participants in these sets of relationships. Such duties were also extended to the dead, where the living stood as sons to their deceased family. This led to the veneration of ancestors. In time, filial piety was also built into the Chinese legal system: a criminal would be punished more harshly if the culprit had committed the crime against a parent, while fathers exercised enormous power over their children. Much the same was true of other unequal relationships.

This theme consistently manifests itself in many aspects of Chinese culture even to this day, with extensive filial duties on the part of children toward parents and elders, and greater concern of parents toward their children than found in modern American or European cultures. (Family Value, Wikipedia)