Filial piety, considered by many to be a foundational value in Chinese society, has
been examined, extolled, deconstructed, attacked, defined, and re-defined for the last
century. Filial piety (the usual English translation of the Chinese word xiao) can be
understood as a set of interlocking principles that emphasize a son’s duty to respect,
obey, and support his parents. By extension, these principles provided a model for proper
relations between wives and their husbands’ parents, junior and senior, as well as subject
and emperor. The sociologist Martin Whyte puts it this way: “In imperial China filial
piety was a central value of family life, and the centrality of family life in Confucian
statecraft made filial piety a lynchpin for the entire social order. Down through the
centuries parents constantly stressed to their children that the way they treated their elders
was a central measure of their moral worth.”1