Spring 2013

Professor Liu Jianmei

Western family concepts Chinese family concepts

Conjugal family

Emphasizing love

relationship

Based on equality

Rooted on self-actualization

Several generations

together

Emphasizing affections between family

members Based on hierarchical

relationships Rooted in the glory of

family

According to Russell, there are three kinds of desire for an individual to marry and have a family:

The desire for sex

The desire for the continuity of ones life

The desire for power

1Criticizing filial piety Lu Xun dislikes the old tale of Guo Ju Buries His Son (.

2Criticizing the concept of chastity and speaking for Chinese women

3Criticizing slave morality

Ibsons The Dolls House http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbTGhNw98aw

Ba Jins long-length novel Family

The youngest brother is influenced by the Marxist thought and eventually walked out of the old family to join revolution.

The eldest brother is vacillating between the old family system and the modern new ideas and thus becomes a tragic figure in the novel.

Lu Xuns novel Regret for the Past Zijun walks out of the old family to marry Juansheng, but after Juansheng is tired of her as well as their normal family life, she died in despair. What can Nora do after she walks out of the family? If they are not financially independent, what can they do? Lu Xun What Will Nora Do after She goes away?

Women are half of the skyMao Zedongs sentence

Revolutionary women seem to gain equality with men, but they lost the femininity during the revolutionary period.

Iron women: The CCP has been prone to laud itself as the champion of women's liberation.

Meng Yue points out: the states political discourse translated itself through women into the private context of desire, love, marriage, divorce, and familiar relations, and it turned women into an agent politicizing desire, love, and family relations by delimiting and repressing sexuality, self, and all private emotions. In contrast with the officially sponsored sexual equality between men and women, Meng Yue notes, womens bodies and sexual desire went through a process of desexualization, after which they, as the daughters of the Party, were the bearers of the socialist myth of class struggle or liberation.

Meng Yue, Female Images and National Myth.

(Undertaking several duties at the same time)

How can a career woman balance between

career and motherhood?

A) quit the job to be a housewife B) ask her husband to share the duties C) Be a strong woman to focus more on jobs

When a career woman wants to go back to be a house wife, can she gain a comfortable life? Can she be completely equal to her husband if she has no financial incomes at all? Will she repeat the role of Nora in Ibsons A Dolls House?

A) She will have a more comfortable life.

B) She will lose her subjectivity and become dependent of her husband.

C) depends on different circumstances

In the old family, fathers have the absolute power, now in the new family system, do sons need to fulfill the duty of filial piety? Do sons need to undertake the responsibilities of taking care of the elders?

A) Yes, we still need filial piety.

B) No, filial piety belongs to the old family system.

When an individual has to compromise in the family relationship, does the self-actualization in conflict with family harmony?

Family values are contradictory to personal choice as well as self-fulfillment. Argue for or against this statement using what you have learned from the course to support your point of view.

Based the family pattern on equality Based the family pattern on reasonableness

Lin Yutang:In contrast to logic, there is common sense, or still better, the Spirit of Reasonableness. The Importance of Living, p.423.

I have said in My Country and My People that: For a Westerner, it is usually sufficient for a proposition to be logically sound. For a Chinese it is not sufficient that a proposition be logically correct, but it must be at the same time in accord with human nature. In fact to be in accord with human nature, to be human, is a greater consideration than to be logical.

The Chinese word for reasonableness is Qingli (), which is composed of two elements, qing or human nature, and li or eternal reason. Qing represents the flexible, human element, while li represents the immutable law of the universe. A cultured man is one who understands thoroughly the human heart and the laws of things.

The small town life still maintains the Protestant ethic and the Puritan temper, emphasizing work, sobriety, frugality, sexual restraint, and a forbidding attitude toward life.

The film The Revolutionary Road criticizing the suffocating atmosphere of the small town life.

But the film New in Town, Majestic, all affirm the purity of the small town life.