The traditional Chinese social system was based on the family, not the individual, and to preserve the family, Confucian ideology insisted that filial piety or hsiao be the foundation of its ethics. To the Chinese, family existence, clan harmony, social peace, and the preservation of Chinese culture all rested on the proper observance of this virtue. In the Hsiao-ching, or the Classic on Filial Piety, we read,
filial piety is the basis of virtue and the source of the teachings. we receive our body, our hair, and skin from our parents, and we dare not destroy them. This is the beginning of filial piety. To establish ourselves and practise the way, so that we will perpetuate our name in later generations, thus glorifying our parents, this is the end of filial piety. For filial piety starts with serving our parents, continues with serving the ruling prince, and ends with establishing ourselves... The filial son serving his parents should be most respectful to them while living, most joyful in supporting them, greatly worried at their illness, deeply grieved at their death, and utterly solemn at the sacrifices... of the 3,000 offenses included under the five punishments, none is greater than unfilial conduct.[compare this version of the text with that given as a parallel Chinese-English text by Derk Bodde)
As models of filial conduct, Chinese literature usually refers to the twenty-four examples of filial sons performing prodigious feats for the welfare of their parents. One individual, Wang Hsiang of the Chin dynasty, stripped off his clothing in deep winter and reclined on ice in the river, so that his bodily warmth melted the ice and enabled him to catch some carp for his mother. Another example has as its hero an eight-year-old boy, Wu Meng, also of the Chin dynasty, whose family was so poor that it could not afford to buy even a mosquito net. In order to protect his parents from the mosquitos, the boy slept naked, so that the insects stung him insted of his parents. The extreme example concerned an individual of the Han dynasty, Kuo Chu, who planned to kill his own son in order to save some food for his mother...
(pp. 14-15)
Hsiao Ching (THE CLASSIC OF FILIAL PIETY) Translated by James Legge
Examples of Filial Piety (14th Century CE)
Filial Piety in Modern Times: Timely Adaptation and Practice Patterns (Kyu-taik Sung)
Loyalty, Filial Piety in Changing Times (President Kim Dae Jung Korea June, 1999)
The Picture-Book of Twenty-Four Acts of Filial Piety (From Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk --Lu Hsun on Filial Piety)
Filial Piety: The Traditional Ideal of Parent Care in East Asia by Kyu-taik Sung
abstracts from a conference session on The Practice of Filial Piety in Contemporary China