How to legally killyour son

A Record of Anecdotes in Zhenfan(《鎮(zhèn)番軼事歷鑒》put down a tragic story that goes like this: in famine that happened in Zhenfan, a granny aged 80 caught her grandchild playing on Kang and ate her in extreme hunger before the court allowed the local government to distribute wheat in official barns for the loss of wheat from the dry weather. It was because Zhenfan was too far from the central city where Emperor dealt with the ruling businesses. Before his permission, the local governor was not allowed to open the barn and distribute the wheat to save the starved folk.

When I told this story to an old friend, he opened his mouth wide and for a long while unable to close it for being shocked. He couldn’t believe his ears.  In hunger, people lost senses and completely became beasts. In ancient China, there were some periods in history during which people  changed their sons and ate them for lives, 易子而食 and they thought it was formal. In their opinions,sons and daughters were their belongings and they should be sacrificed for fathers and mothers.

Justice in ancient China was : Let the king be a king, the minister (be) a minister, the father afather and the son a son. What does that mean? The answer is : if the king wanted the minister to die for nothing, the minister should die without hesitation and ask not why. The father is like a king and a son is a minister.

A stepmother ,accordingto the Book of Filial Piety（《孝經(jīng)》）, all of a sudden the idea occurred to her that she needed a fish to eat, ordered her son to catch a fish for her immediately.It was deep winter, the chilly wind blowing, the river frozen, but the stepmother ignored it and urged severely the son to go to the river beside the village and to catch a fish for her. The son came to the river and put off the clothes and lay down on his chest to melt the ice so that he could go down the river to catch a fish for his stepmother.   The story was put down in the book not because the mother’s cruelty should be reproached but because his behavior represented the noblest filial piety and the other sons and daughters were advocated to learn from him. He was an example for all sons and daughters one generation after another.

He just sacrificed himself for the filial piety. In another story, a man named Guo Ju would sacrifice his own son to accomplish his filial piety. The story goes like this:the family were short of food and Guo Ju couldn't find enough food for both his parents and his child. He thought he would kill his son to save the food for his parents. Killing parents would make people call his name but killing his son for his parents would make him eulogized for his filial piety. So he brought his son to the field and dug a hole to bury his son alive. His filial behavior moved the heaven and in the hole there was a piece of gold given to him as reward for his filial piety. No one would think that his killing the son was a severe crime and he was too cruel. Why? Because the filial piety was justice in ancient China.

Guo Ju wanted to kill his son to save his parents and was eulogized for his piety to his parents and the story was recorded and passed on just because parents like it. Of cause,they define justice and moral rules.

Yet a cook bearing the name of Yi Ya could do something more shocking. He was a good cook, good enough to cook his own son into a delicious meal for his king. One day ,his king casually said : I tasted all kinds of delicious meals except that meat from a person. So big a pity it is!  Yi Ya heard this and put it on his mind and thought it was a golden opportunity to curry favor with the king. The king was king, so noble and so kingly, so he could eat meat from a common person and even a prisoner. Just that moment, his son of four years came into the kitchen and Yi Ya was delightful that he could kill his son for the meal. So did he do. The king enjoyed a golden vessel of soup so fresh and tasty and was moved to teas for Yi Ya’s piety.

These stories tell us that killing a son for one’s parents and king was legal and noble. The person who killed his son would be eulogized for his piety to his parents and king. This was the justice the parents and the king desired and it has become the moral rules for the gentlemen in ancient China. Piety to parents won high praise justbecause it naturally led to piety to king.

No wonder the writer and fighter Lu Xun ever wrote in his novel that he could finally see two Chinese characters “吃人” after he read through the history of ancient China.