Chinese people bestow great importance to a family that they made familism central in traditional Chinese society. Among all different traditional Chinese rituals, one of the most important is filial piety. In my opinion, filial piety is an integral part of Chinese culture. The term filial piety refers to the extreme respect that Chinese children are supposed to show their parents. It involves many different things including taking care of the parents, burying them properly after death, bringing honor to the family, and having a male heir to carry on the family name. Practicing these ideas is a very important part of Chinese culture.
As it is important in Chinese culture, filial piety is embraced by three of China’s major religions: Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism. Among the three, Confucianism, with its well-documented social hierarchy, supported the ideals of filial piety the most. Buddhism and Daoism also supported filial piety in some of their texts but had monastic systems that prevented monks and nuns from being filial children. Also, filial piety matches the Confucianism ideal of respecting and behaving properly towards all elders. According to Confucius, respect for one’s father while he is alive is a given — something that even animals do. But, to be a filial child, one must respect parents even after their death. Confucius goes on to cite further specific examples of what a filial son should do for his parents. Among them, children should never offend their parents, never speak badly of them, not travel far away without purpose, always be conscious of their parent’s age, and protect them whenever necessary.
Although many Buddhist and Daoist texts support the idea of filial piety, their monastic intuitions seem to be in direct contrast to one of the main responsibilities of a filial child — having a male heir in order to carry on the family name. Both Daoist and Buddhist monks were required to leave their parents behind to live a cloistered life, an action that certainly does not agree with the concept of filial piety. Furthermore, they are required to remain celibate and can therefore not have any children. Without having children, one cannot have a male heir to carry on the family name. Because having a male heir is a core component of filial piety, a Buddhist or Daoist monk, therefore, can never be a filial son.
On another note, Chinese marriage is another interesting and important aspect of traditional Chinese family life. Traditional Chinese marriage was never a free union of two young adults to establish a new household. Marriage for the traditional Chinese is the transfer of a young girl from her natal family to her married family. Being assimilated into the new family is considered her economically productive contribution to the family corporation: she must become a docile wife and a good mother to her husband’s children. Thus, most women were not allowed to choose the person they married. Instead, the family of the bride picks the prospective husband. Marriages were chosen based upon the needs of reproduction and honor, as well as the needs of the father and husband.
To find a possible mate for their son or daughter, friends and relatives are constantly on alert for possible mates for young boys and girls. However, professional help is sometimes required, particularly if parents only had one marginally marriageable kid in their hands. These professional matchmakers are called “méirén” and they are a constant feature of the Chinese social scene.
After the right match has been found, there are traditional marriage rituals that are strictly followed. Chinese marriage became a custom between 402-221 B.C. Despite China’s long history and many different geographical areas, there are basically six rituals, generally known as the three letters and six etiquettes.
However, divorce can be possible in traditional Chinese society. Late imperial family law, based on earlier moral and legal codes, provided seven grounds for divorce and three protections against divorce. In essence, the new family member (the “future” wife) had to prove herself a valuable team player, capable of doing the job for which she was recruited, of getting on with the other members of the family, and of advancing (or not hindering) family interests. When she had been in a family for a reasonable period, she was “off probation” and could no longer be divorced.
Until the 20th century, Chinese society also regarded it normal for a man to take more than one wife, especially if the first wife did not produce any male offspring and so long as the family budget could afford the additional wife. However, there was always a distinction between the first wife and a secondary wife (concubine).
On the occasion of spousal death, traditional Chinese society always honored “chaste widows” or “guăfù” which literally meant “lonely women”. These are wives, on the death of their husbands (or fiancés), did not remarry, but remained attached to the same household and continued to serve the husband’s family. An important consideration would be the wife’s economic security since she was legally entitled in continuing to get support from his family just as she was bound to continue her services to them. Such a convention was not always comfortable for all parties concerned. Some law cases turned on efforts by other family members to eject or marry off younger widows, or to sell them as prostitutes or servants. Others widows would escape off with lovers. As far as I know, there is a lack of data on actual practice, but it seems likely that younger widows, especially without children, will eventually remarry in most periods, while older widows probably did not. Not surprisingly, men were expected to remarry after a decent interval following the death of a wife, if she had not born a son. If he already had a son, remarriage was regarded as a matter of his comfort and was left to his discretion.
In Confucian thought, marriage is of grave significance both to families and to society. Traditionally incest has been defined as marriage between people with the same surname. From the perspective of a Confucian family, marriage brings together families of different surnames and so continues the family line of the paternal clan. This is generally why having a boy is more preferred than a girl when giving birth. Therefore, the merits and demerits of any marriage are important to the entire family, not just the individual couples. Socially, the married couple is thought to be the basic unit of society. In Chinese history, there have been many times when marriages have affected the country’s political stability and international relations. From the Han Dynasty, the rulers of certain powerful foreign tribes such as the Mongolians, the Manchus, the Xiongnu, and the Turks demanded women from the Imperial family. Many periods of Chinese history were dominated by the families of the wife or mother of the ruling Emperor. Thus, marriage can also be related to politics.