Call to filial duty
Updated: 2008-05-12 07:17
An online survey shows that 40 percent of the respondents expressed their concern for their mothers by making phone calls to them on Mother's Day yesterday. This survey also suggests that 60 percent of them believe that the Chinese need to have a Mother's Day of their own.
A motion endorsed by 60 members of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) proposed at the CPPCC session this March that April 2 on the Chinese lunar calendar be designated as China's Mother's Day.
The day was chosen because the mother of an ancient Chinese sage, Mencius, gave birth to this great thinker (BC 372-289) on that day 2,380 years ago. It was also in respectful memory of this mother known for her wisdom and efforts in raising her son as one of the most influential sages.
Great as Mencius' mother was and eager as many Chinese scholars are to awaken among young people the sense of duty to their parents, it is not really importment whether China has a Mother's Day of its own as the world is increasingly integrated into a global village.
Anyone from any ethnicity or nationality should feel indebted to his or her mother for the hardships and sufferings she endures to bring him or her up. The sense of duty should be the same in nature although its manifestations may vary for people from different ethnicities.
What we Chinese need to think about on this particular occasion is why ancient Chinese sages such as Confucius and Mencius emphasized filial piety as fundamental to all the qualities that make for a man's moral integrity.
This is clearly because performing the duties to one's parents should always be the first thing anyone should learn to do during the years of growing up. It is by performing such duties that we learn how to behave ourselves once we enter the larger society beyond our families.
Ancient thinkers always associated filial piety with patriotism. The logic was that it was difficult to imagine that a person who did not want to show his or her filial love to his or her parents would be willing to make any contributions to his or her country, let alone making sacrifices for the country at critical moments.
If Mother's Day is to be a reminder that filial piety should be the starting point for one on the way of becoming a person of moral integrity, is it really necessary to bother about where such a day originated?
(China Daily 05/12/2008 page4)
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