{"id":465,"date":"2012-09-06T17:20:03","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T21:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/?p=465"},"modified":"2012-11-15T17:56:40","modified_gmt":"2012-11-15T22:56:40","slug":"as-china-ages-beijing-turns-to-morality-tales-to-spur-filial-devotion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/2012\/09\/06\/as-china-ages-beijing-turns-to-morality-tales-to-spur-filial-devotion-2\/","title":{"rendered":"As China Ages, Beijing Turns to Morality Tales to Spur Filial Devotion"},"content":{"rendered":"

NYT\u00a0ANDREW JACOBS and ADAM CENTURY\u00a0September 5, 2012<\/a><\/p>\n

BEIJING \u2014 Reading it now, six centuries after Guo Jujing wrote this paean to parental devotion, \u201cThe 24 Paragons of Filial Piety\u201d comes off as a collection of scary bedtime stories. There is the woman who cut out her own liver to feed her sick mother, the boy who sat awake shirtless all night to draw mosquitoes away from his slumbering parents and the man who sold himself into servitude to pay for a father\u2019s funeral.<\/p>\n

Filial Piety: From Strangling Tigers to Taming the Internet<\/p>\n

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\nWhile the parables are even more familiar to most Chinese than Grimms\u2019 Fairy Tales are to Americans \u2014 the text remains a mainstay of educational curriculum here \u2014 they have understandably lost much of their motivational punch.<\/p>\n

But when the government, in an effort to address the book\u2019s glaring obsolescence, issued an updated version last month in the hope that the book would encourage more Chinese to turn away from their increasingly self-centered ways and perhaps phone home once in a while, it wasn\u2019t quite prepared for the backlash.<\/p>\n

Compared with its predecessor, the new book brims with down-to-earth suggestions for keeping parents happy in their golden years. Readers are urged to teach them how to surf the Internet, take Mom to a classic film and buy health insurance for retired parents.<\/p>\n

\u201cFamily is the nucleus of society,\u201d intoned Cui Shuhui, the director of the All-China Women\u2019s Federation, which, along with the China National Committee on Aging, published the new guidelines after two years of interviews with older Chinese. \u201cWe need family in order to advance Chinese society and improve our economic situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

So far, those good intentions appear to have prompted mostly ridicule. But they have also unintentionally kicked up a debate on whether the government, not overextended children, should be looking after China\u2019s ballooning population of retirees.<\/p>\n

In a fast-aging nation where hundreds of millions of people have left their former homes in the countryside in search of jobs, \u201cThe New 24 Paragons of Filial Piety\u201d strikes many as nearly as out of touch with the problems of modern China as the old parables.<\/p>\n

Take, for example, the responsibility to \u201ctake one\u2019s parents traveling frequently.\u201d While feasible for successful professionals, the obligation is all but impossible for working people, especially the nation\u2019s roughly 252 million migrant workers, few of whom have ever experienced the joys of leisure travel.<\/p>\n

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, their numbers are rising 4.4 percent annually, meaning that nearly 11 million rural migrants arrived in Chinese cities last year alone \u2014 and most likely left their aging parents behind.<\/p>\n

Zhang Yang, a fruit vendor in Beijing, scoffed at the suggestion that he should take his parents on vacation, noting that he rarely stops working or has time to visit them in their hometown in Henan Province, roughly 400 miles south of the capital.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne time I didn\u2019t get to go home for four years,\u201d he said sheepishly. \u201cBusiness here is good, but I feel guilty for not being with my parents.\u201d<\/p>\n

Li Ji, a popular columnist at the state-run Legal Daily newspaper, lashed out at the new guidelines, arguing that they would not be necessary if the government provided better care for its citizens. \u201cIf the national health insurance was up to par, children wouldn\u2019t have to worry so much about their parents\u2019 health, and if companies were required to provide a certain number of vacation days, children would be able to go home more often,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Despite the demands of an increasingly fast-paced society, the Confucian idea of filial devotion is deeply embedded in Chinese society. Tradition dictates that children live with their parents and care for them in their old age, a convention that historically provided a safety net.<\/p>\n

But the custom is rapidly fraying as children struggle with the logistical and financial burdens of caring for their aged parents.<\/p>\n

This has proved particularly challenging in recent years to the huge numbers of only children born after the introduction of strict family-planning rules in the late 1970s. One result, demographers say, is a skyrocketing number of so-called empty nests filled by older people who live alone while their children build their own roosts in distant cities.<\/p>\n

According to the Ministry of Civil Affairs, empty nests now account for more than 50 percent of all Chinese households; in some urban areas the figure has reached 70 percent. A 2011 report by the official Xinhua news agency said that nearly half of the 185 million people age 60 and older live apart from their children \u2014 a phenomenon unheard of a generation ago.<\/p>\n

Like many young Chinese, Chen Xuena, who works for a public relations company in Beijing, said she was torn between chasing a career and tending to her parents in far-off Zhejiang Province.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I visit home I see signs that my parents are getting older, and it really brings me down,\u201d said Ms. Chen, sitting at one of the capital\u2019s coffee bars. \u201cBut once you get used to the opportunities and culture of Beijing, it\u2019s hard to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such angst will only continue to grow, and not just because China still lacks a meaningful social safety net for the elderly. Demographers estimate that the population of those over 60 will triple before 2050; around the same time, projections show the median age of Chinese will be higher than that of Americans, but with perhaps one-third of the average income, adjusted for the cost of living.<\/p>\n

Such figures help explain the sense of urgency that is beginning to grip the governing Communist Party. Last year, in an attempt to ease the impact from so much atomized living, the National People\u2019s Congress, China\u2019s legislature, proposed a law that obliges sons and daughters to \u201creturn home to visit their parents frequently.\u201d<\/p>\n

The legislation would enable neglected parents to sue their children for infractions, though the vagueness of the law \u2014 it does not spell out the frequency of visits \u2014 has raised some doubts about its enforceability.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe New 24 Paragons of Filial Piety,\u201d despite its ham-handedness, tries to address the root causes of loneliness.<\/p>\n

It urges children to throw their parents a birthday party each year and listen attentively to their stories from the past. It even asks that children help widowed parents remarry, a task that some parents found objectionable.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would be really embarrassed if my son tried to help me remarry,\u201d said Xu Zhihao, a retiree who was sunning himself with friends in a Beijing park on Wednesday. \u201cThat\u2019s not part of Chinese tradition.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NYT\u00a0ANDREW JACOBS and ADAM CENTURY\u00a0September 5, 2012 BEIJING \u2014 Reading it now, six centuries after Guo Jujing wrote this paean to parental devotion, \u201cThe 24 Paragons of Filial Piety\u201d comes off as a collection of scary bedtime stories. There is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":295,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[74321,40877],"tags":[40874],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/295"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":481,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions\/481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/agingchina\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}