OPINION> Liu Shinan
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OPINION> Liu Shinan
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Comment not welcome on girl's naive bid to save dad
By Liu Shinan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-02-18 07:43
Early this month, an event in Wuxi, Jiangsu province attracted public attention across the country. A 13-year-old girl attempted to kill herself in the naive hope her liver could be transplanted to save her father from dying of cancer. The girl's actions moved hundreds of thousands of people to comment on the Internet. Though all major media outlets reported the event, few of them published commentaries. The reason, I assume, is that they all appreciated the girl's selfless love for her father but did not condone her obviously nave way of saving him. However, a few commentators published articles prattling about their indignation at the "attempt to eulogize and promote" the girl's "foolish filial faithfulness to her father". I don't know what these people based their arguments on, because the truth is nobody had said the girl should be extolled as a model for the younger generation. All the online comments only expressed admiration for the girl's noble love without any suggestion that other youngsters follow her example. These few commentators seemed to have tried to distinguish themselves by saying something at odds with the public mood. If that's the case, their comments were egregious, making them nothing more than contemptible show-offs. What deserves attention is their association of the girl's move with what they said was society's return to "the feudalistic tradition". They said the girl's tragedy reminded them of an ancient story about a man named Guo Ju in the Jin Dynasty (AD 265-420), who wanted to bury his son alive in order to save food for his mother. The story was one of the "24 Examples of Filial Behavior" in ancient China. Many of the stories have been condemned in modern China as being inhumane because they advocate unconditional sacrifice on the part of children for the benefit of their parents. Those few commentators said the girl's move was the result of our society retrieving the dregs of traditional Chinese culture to guide human relations. This assertion is totally groundless. If our society's current promotion of filial values had really reached the extent of the "24 Examples of Filial Behavior," it would certainly deserve criticism. The real problem, however, is that many virtues advocated in traditional Chinese ethics were lost in decades-long pursuits of material wealth. The appeals in recent years for the younger generation to be filial to their parents derived from the revelation that among many young people there was a weaker and weaker sense of responsibility, and some even ill-treated elders. It has only been a few years since a media and school campaign began to re-emphasize the filial values. The situation is far from having gone too far and there has been no public promotion of the "24 Examples of Filial Behavior". The allegation that filial education has returned to an old track is sheer exaggeration motivated by sensationalism. And I don't think the girl in Wuxi has learned about the story of Guo Ju. I believe that she did what she did simply because she loved her father. Such love is the most valuable and noble human feeling. Netizens expressed their appreciation for the girl's act because they treasure this human feeling, not because of what she did. And Chinese people are going out of their way to treasure such a feeling once again because of the growing number of cases in which young people do not respect their parents. On the same day when the Wuxi girl's news broke, a female college graduate beat her mother at a job fair because she "forced" her to find a job. She had relied on her parents to look after her without trying to find work. There are so many young people like her nowadays in China that sociologists have coined a phrase to describe them - kenlaozu, or "youngsters who prefer living off their parents' support to getting a job". They may be excused because of the harsh employment situation but should not be pardoned if they act violent toward their seniors. E-mail: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn (China Daily 02/18/2009 page8) |
