Good Sons and Virtuous Mothers: Kinship and Chinese Nationalism in Taiwan

Abstract

The relationship between Chinese families and the state is examined through village religion and national education in Taiwan. People in the village of Beicun approach deities through spirit mediums as a way of ensuring the protection of their children from harm. Children are thus represented as of great value to families, who depend upon their biological, economic and ntual productivity. National education also accepts and promotes the filial duties of children, but loyalty to the nation, and especially loyalty to the point of death, is represented as the highest fulfilment of these duties. Both the rhetoric of kinship and the rhetoric of nationalism focus on the role of women as mothers. Mothers must show themselves to be virtuous by first producing and protecting children, and then by giving them over to the control of men. This article focuses on one aspect of Chinese nationalism: its relationship to Chinese kinship. A man who is a bad son is 'not a person' (bu suan ren). And 'a good man does not become a soldier' (hao nan bu dang bing). One becomes a good son by caring for the physical and spiritual well-being of one's parents: feeding them before and after death, providing them with an income and with grandchildren, and so on. These obligations of kinship are, at least in theory, problematic for nationalism, which emphasizes the willingness of citizens to become soldiers, to make sacrifices and to die for the nation. Some nationalists have argued that the Chinese are unwilling to martyr themselves, or to allow their children to serve the nation, because of the priority given to family concerns. In more general terms, what is at issue is the representation of children as physical and spiritual assets held by women, families and the state. In order to place this discussion in a specific context, I will turn to Chinese religion as it is practised in Beicun, a fishing village of about 600 people in southeastern Taiwan. I do so because parents in the village turn to deities in their attempts to protect and strengthen their children. This example of local religion will be contrasted with national education, which is only a partial transformation of the contrast made by many writers between 'local' and 'official' Chinese religions. For example, Sangren has analysed the oppositional and complementary relationship between folk religion and state orthodoxy (1987: 224-5), as Weber before him analysed unorthodox Daoism and orthodox Confucianism (1984: 56-72). Feuchtwang, in his discussion of government involvement in Taiwanese popular religion, has noted the important part played by education in reinforcing the official end of this local/official contrast (1974: 263-301). It is to