Oedipus Lex: Some Thoughts on Swear Words
and the Incest Taboo in China and the West

Youqin Wang
Stanford University

In a recent essay on comparative approaches to the gendered dimensions of struggles for change, Jeffrey Wasserstrom suggests that the analytical approach Lynn Hunt develops in her study of The Family Romance of the French Revolution may be of use to scholars interested in the cultural dimensions of Chinese upheavals.⁽¹⁾ Wasserstrom's comments are interesting ones that deserve to be looked at more closely, but we should be aware of the risks involved in taking this particular tack in comparing revolutions. The French and Chinese cases are, after all, not just distant from one another in temporal and spatial terms; they also involve very different cultural contexts. Before we can decide whether or not Hunt's interpretive strategies can be adapted to help us make sense of Chinese events associated with dates such as 1911 and 1949, we must compare and contrast the connotations that the very notion of a "family romance" has in China and the West. One of the goals of this essay, which focuses on linguistic differences that affect the way members of different societies talk and write about relations within the family, is to undertake just such a comparison. In addition, I hope to shed light on one factor--ideas relating to incest taboos--that may account for much of this rhetorical diversity. Finally, in working toward both of these aims, this essay also tries to place in a novel perspective some issues associated with the politics of swearing. It is, thus, with a famous interchange of swear words that this piece begins.

When Patrick Hurley was sent to China to try to negotiate with the leaders of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) and the Guomindang (GMD) in the 1940s, the public and private exchanges that took place between the key political figures involved were often punctuated by a colorful assortment of vulgar phrases. Hurley is said to have heard Mao Zedong call Jiang Jieshi a "turtle's egg" (wangba dan)--a term of opprobrium that E. J. Kahn Jr. describes as having carried roughly the same weight in China as "motherfucker" did in the United States.⁽²⁾ This presumed American equivalent to "turtle's egg" was, moreover, exactly what Hurley is said to have called Mao at times.⁽³⁾ At first glance, this swear word that simultaneously conjures up the person of a mother and the act of sexual intercourse would seem to be the exact counterpart, not to any Chinese phrase associated with turtles, but rather to the common Chinese obscenity ta ma de. This phrase, which means "(fuck) his mother," is so popular and distinctive that the renowned writer Lu Xun once jokingly claimed that, just as the peony was his country's "national flower," ta ma de should be considered the "national swear word" of China.⁽⁴⁾ The phrase is close enough in meaning to "motherfucker" that at least one leading American translator of Chinese literature has rendered it this way in his English language version of Lu Xun's stories.⁽⁵⁾ There are, as I suggest below, some differences between the two expressions, but the translator in question can hardly be said to have committed a mistake, as there is certainly no closer English equivalent to ta ma de than motherfucker.

Because of the important practical and symbolic roles mothers play in all societies, it should not surprise us that Chinese and Western cultures alike provide examples of common expressions that can be used to denigrate a son by insulting his mother. However, the above Chinese and English language illustrations of this type of swearing exhibit an interesting difference in emphasis. The object of the sexual assault in both cases is indeed the mother of the accused. Yet the one having sex with the female parent in the term motherfucker is often assumed to be the person being insulted; while the perpetrator of the assault in the Chinese case of ta ma de could very easily be taken to be the person delivering the insult, and is quite definitely not supposed to be the son himself. In other words, the American obscenity suggests or at least raises the possibility of incest, even though motherfucker is not usually interpreted literally. In contrast, the "equivalent" Chinese vulgarity has nothing to do with the mother-son incest taboo, and hence is not associated with any kind of family romance or Oedipal idea.

Similarly, the profanity "turtle's egg" is also related to issues of parentage and sexuality, but in a way that differs markedly from that obtaining in the case of motherfucker. By calling Jiang a son of a turtle, Mao was suggesting that the father of his rival was a turtle, an animal that in Chinese popular culture is often linked to cuckoldry. To a certain extent, then, "turtle's egg" functions as a kind of implicit version of ta ma de. Both of these common Chinese swear words refer to adultery or fornication; the emphasis is on illicit sex taking place outside of marriage and there is no connotation in either case that incest is involved in any way.

When, at roughly the same time in the 1940s, Mao insulted Jiang and Hurley insulted Mao, they might merely have been picking the most vicious swear words from their own lexicons without considering the precise or literal meaning of those words. Nonetheless, their choice of words points to a deeper difference in their cultural backgrounds. In his book Swearing, Geoffrey Hughes says that the main sense of the term motherfucker is "one who has intercourse with his mother," and goes on to note that variants of this phrase are recorded in many European languages, including some far removed from British English.⁽⁶⁾ It is striking, therefore, that in searching through the field of Chinese swear words, I have yet to find anything directly equivalent, in the sense of implying mother-son incest. What underlies this difference in patterns of profanity? Obviously, the English term motherfucker and its counterparts in other European languages are insulting because they suggest a serious violation of a societal taboo. This does not answer the question posed above, however, as incest is no less strongly frowned upon in China than in America or Europe.

Swear words do not simply reflect social mores; they also play an active role in shaping them. If an action considered despicable is referred to in a commonly used swear word, this accusation will continually remind people that the action is shameful. When people swear in contempt--as Hurley is said to have done often--to release their anger and resentment, they can simultaneously repeat and reinforce moral taboos, such as that associated with mother-son incest. In this sense, the swear word can operate in part as a form of public control. This raises an interesting ancillary question to the one posed earlier: What does it tell us about the distinctive characteristics of Chinese culture that the particular taboo of interest to us here does not hold a prominent place in its repertoire of vulgarities? Profanity obviously involves a rather extreme employment of language, and its representativeness for a given culture is hence limited. It would be foolish, therefore, to characterize a culture's attitude toward incest based solely on an analysis of swear words. It is reasonable to suggest, however, that the small special differences one can observe on the surfaces of a pair of languages, like the tips of icebergs, may indicate more profound differences operating in the depths of the two respective cultures.

This implies, among other things, that before racing to use the concept of the family romance to analyze major historical events such as revolutions, it is worth taking time to see how notions of incest and the parent-child relationship, as well as swear words relating to these things, vary between cultures. If this is not done, there is a risk that model-building will result in nothing more than a beautiful but unstable pagoda on a foundation of sand. In the following discussion we will see that the differences relating to swear words are indicative of other kinds of differences, and that these deserve further observation and analysis.

In looking over the traditional literature of China, I have found not only that references to mother-son incest are absent from the standard stock of Chinese profanities, but also that they are missing from the main corpus of mythological and legendary stories, classic works of fiction, and best-known plays. Even in historical works one is hard pressed to find a single reference to parent-child incest. While I would hesitate to claim that there are no references at all to parent-child incest in the vast body of more than two thousand years of Chinese literature, it is safe to say that incest has never been a common theme for Chinese writers. In other words, there is nothing in traditional Chinese literature comparable to the Oedipus story, at least in its centrality as a point of reference.

In Greek mythology, Oedipus, the king of Thebes, killed his father and married his mother without knowing either of them were his parents. When the truth of their relationship came to light, the mother hanged herself. According to Homer, after his mother's suicide, Oedipus continued to rule Thebes until his death. The Oedipus story related in Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Coloneus differs from Homer's account in emphasis and detail. One of the most significant differences is that, in Sophocles's version, when the truth becomes known, Oedipus blinds himself and goes into exile, haunted by an overwhelming sense of unredeemed guilt.

Allusions to the Oedipus story dot European and American literature, transmitted through a long succession of writers in various formats in the two millennia since Homer's time. For instance, John Dryden wrote a drama about Oedipus, and the popularity of this play saved his theater in London; the French writer Andre Gide penned another version of the story; and Igor Stravinsky composed an opera based on the Greek tale. In contemporary America, adaptations of and references to the Oedipus story routinely appear in movies and television shows. It has been the subject of farces and satirical poems and songs.⁽⁷⁾

Sigmund Freud brought the name of Oedipus to new prominence when he used it to describe what he saw as a commonplace psychological complex. Freud held that Oedipus's situation, or family romance, was a universal phenomenon and that it was the source of a set of powerful taboos against incest that could be found operating in essentially the same way in every culture. Freud believed that the Oedipus story gave expression to underlying fantasies about incest that were prohibited outside of literature unless they were carefully disguised. Otto Rank's further investigations of and writings on the incest theme are often seen as having proved that Freud's assumption of universality was valid. Rank describes many works of literature and frequently told legends and stories that are similar to the Oedipus tale, or share with it common issues. His wide-ranging lists of examples include everything from classic works of literature and myth to medieval fables and Christian legends to works of modern literature.⁽⁸⁾

It is worth stressing, however, that Rank's survey was limited to literature and legends in Indo-European languages. His book-length study proves the popularity of the Oedipus story, but only within a culturally and linguistically defined set of communities, admittedly broad and varied though they are. If Rank had turned toward traditional Chinese literature or legends, he would have found few examples to analyze. In Chinese culture sexual taboos are often constructed in terms broader than acts of intercourse involving parents and children or siblings, yet the incest fantasy seems never to emerge in the history of Chinese oral or written literature, which can be traced back at least twenty-five hundred years. Even in early codes of Chinese criminal law, such as that of the Tang dynasty (618-907), there is often no mention at all of parent-child incest.⁽⁹⁾

Moreover, merely by virtue of having been articulated by a distinguished thinker, Freud's vision of the Oedipus complex--with its implication that there is a universal desire among children for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex--has influenced modern literature, in China as well as in the West. In accordance with psychoanalytic theory, some writers have described and emphasized their characters' subconscious desires for sex, especially for parent-child incest, even though this was not the force that motivated Oedipus's actions in any ancient version of the story. Freud's theory of the subconscious has twice had an impact on Chinese literature, in the 1920s­1940s and in the 1980s. In both periods, one finds some Chinese writers attempting to explain the behavior of their characters through reference to subconscious sexual drives. Nevertheless, stories involving the Oedipus complex are still few in modern Chinese literature and traditional Chinese literature is completely devoid of anything like the Oedipus story. This absence is probably a major reason why the Oedipus complex has held less fascination for modern Chinese writers than for their European or American counterparts. In this context, Chinese scholars have reason to be skeptical when they read quotations such as, "Incest must indeed be reckoned as one of man's major interests in life."⁽¹⁰⁾

In Oedipus's story, after Oedipus killed his father and married his mother, the deities punished him by sending a plague down upon his kingdom; he blinded and exiled himself. Indirectly, the story's narrator condemned such illicit behavior through these catastrophic consequences; the story warns us against parricide and incest, and may cause its audience to feel guilty about violence against parents and incestuous behavior or desires. The message embodied in the story is a powerful one, even though we may not at first find it striking since we have become accustomed to the incest taboo. Freud's contribution was to reveal the latent meaning of the story. Curiously, his theory about the Oedipus complex may have the same effect as the Oedipus story itself, as expressed in the form of myth, tragedy, and comedy. The psychological theory, familiar to most college students, has reintroduced conscious instruction against parricide and incest to people who no longer believe in punishment by the gods. Despite the fact that psychological theory, classic tragedy, modern comedy, and the vernacular usage of the profane word motherfucker discussed above represent different genres of expression, from the perspective of the function of controlling family order, each of them is employed to make people ashamed and frightened of incest. All of them can arouse or intensify our sense of guilt concerning incest, even though the message we receive from them may be much more than this.

Freud considered the reaction against the Oedipus complex the most important social achievement of the human mind. Looking at the outcome, the Chinese seem to have achieved the same results. Despite the absence of Oedipus stories in Chinese literature, incest has not run rampant in Chinese society. This raises a series of questions: Why have the Chinese seen no need to relate a story similar to the Oedipus tale? Why did this kind of story not exist in Chinese imagination or fantasy? Is it necessary to expose incest? How did Chinese describe or imagine the parent-child relationship? Apart from the legal proscription, what else did the Chinese do to prevent incest or maintain order in the family? Finally, is this verbal difference regarding incest significant for cultural comparison?

Perhaps the best place to start in trying to shed light on these questions is to look more closely at concepts of kinship and the codes of behavior associated with them, since at its root incest is a taboo concerned with defining the way one should and should not behave toward family members. Turning to traditional Chinese family ethics, xiao (filial piety) has for thousands of years been the most emphasized and influential notion relating to kinship in China. Briefly, xiao refers to the respect one owes one's parents and to the obligations of service that accompany that debt. Stories extolling those who are virtuous in treating their parents in a filial fashion are found sprinkled liberally through the corpus of traditional Chinese literature.

Parents in European and American society are also respected, of course, and as we know one of the Ten Commandments is to "honor thy father and mother." It is nonetheless the case that attitudes toward parents in China seem to have been the focus of much more attention, at least rhetorically, than in many Western lands. There is no common specific term for xiao in English, since words such as filial tend to have something of an artificial ring to them. In Chinese, the term designates only the love of children for their parents, and cannot be used in other contexts. The character in question appeared in bronze inscriptions three thousand years ago and was later used in most of the oldest Chinese texts. Far from being an obscure technical term of moral philosophers, xiao has been and remains a commonly used word in China. The notion of xiao was rigorously criticized during the May Fourth movement of 1919 by a generation of intellectuals who saw traditional culture as an obstacle to modernization. Later, it was just as fiercely attacked by the Communist party, whose leaders claimed that reverence for parents was an impediment to class struggle and modernization. Nevertheless, Chinese of all classes and literacy levels still clearly understand the meaning of the concept today. Compared with ancient times the importance of xiao may be on the decline, but the term has retained its lexical value as a household word.

The Xiao jing (Classic of filial piety), one of the most important classics of ancient China, traditionally attributed to Confucius or his disciple Zengzi, focuses on what xiao means and methods for putting the concept into practice. The Xiao jing describes xiao as nothing less than "the foundation of virtue and the root of civilization."⁽¹¹⁾ According to this canonical text, a man who is xiao has to respect his parents. One way he will demonstrate this is by trying to become a successful person in society so that honor will be brought to the family. In fact, filial piety was long regarded as a fundamental part of education and the Xiao jing was required reading for any educated Chinese. Over the last two thousand years, Chinese scholars have done endless research and written numerous commentaries on the Xiao jing. There is a list of premodern books about this classic which includes as many as 582 items. It was also transmitted to other Asian countries.⁽¹²⁾ By contrast, the English phrase filial piety does not even appear in the index of books such as The Oxford Guide to Family History, When Father Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe, Medieval Household, and American Childhood: Essays on Children's Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.⁽¹³⁾

Scanning traditional Chinese stories and novels, we see that when the storytellers introduce an upright protagonist, the term xiao appears almost invariably as a necessary trait. This is true even of popular bandit novels and romances such as Shui huzhuan, which tells the stories of 108 rebels, each of whom has a nickname. Song Jiang, the respected head of the 108 heroes is given the nickname "The Filial and Gallant Dark Third Master" and is said to have had a reputation for being "filial to his parents."⁽¹⁴⁾ If even rebel heroes were described in this fashion, it should come as no surprise that more orthodox Confucian protagonists were also portrayed as exemplary practitioners of xiao. In works of fiction, being a filial son is often presented as a kind of natural byproduct of a praiseworthy character's goodness, an essential resource that allows him to act with decency. Inevitably, readers will take such figures as role models; to a greater or lesser extent, they will attempt to make their own behavior toward their parents conform to the standards of the hero and will judge the behavior of others in the light of this ideal.

In addition to the word xiao, stories of xiao zi (filial sons) circulated widely. These stories embody the concept of xiao in a concrete and accessible form. They are vehicles for the notion of xiao and they help people, especially children, understand the principle of filial piety. Starting from the Later Han dynasty (25-220) editions of "biographies of the filial sons" were compiled time and time again. Of these, the Twenty-four filial sons, compiled by Guo Jujing during the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368), is the most popular. Later, many versions of this book were illustrated for children and renamed Pictures of Twenty-four filial sons. Some of them were illustrated by eminent painters.

Although these twenty-four filial sons were taken as real historical figures in Chinese history, some were obviously mythological. For instance, one of the stories relates the tale of a boy whose parents are fond of fresh fish. This boy catches fish for his parents every day. In the winter, when the river freezes and he is unable to fish, he goes and lies on the ice. As a response to his filial devotion, the ice suddenly breaks apart, whereupon two fish jump out. In another story, the mother is sick but wants to eat bamboo shoots during the winter. Bamboo shoots usually grow only in the spring. Not knowing how to fulfill his mother's wish, the filial son falls before a cluster of bamboo trees and weeps in supplication. In response to his sincerity, bamboo shoots miraculously appear. On eating soup made from the shoots, the mother quickly recovers. In a later version of the story, the Chinese are said to have begun the practice of harvesting winter bamboo shoots because of this filial son.

Stories of the filial son were also compiled into a rhyme, "Sanzijing" (Classic of three characters). For example, the poem tells the story of a four-year-old boy who carefully selects the smallest pear for himself, reserving the largest for the rest of the family; of a nine-year-old boy who used his body to warm his father's mattress in the winter, and so on. The "Sanzijing," while simple and short, introduces Chinese history and fundamental values. It functioned as a concise encyclopedia of practical ethics for very young children and was widely read, memorized, and recited for hundreds of years.

Stories of filial children found their way into more sophisticated works of fiction as well. For example, Shi dian tou (Rocks nod [in agreement when they hear the stories]), printed in the seventeenth century, contains one story that tells of a young son's search for his missing father, and another of a woman who literally sells her flesh to ensure her mother-in-law's survival.⁽¹⁵⁾ The prominent scholar Zheng Zhenduo, author of the first history of vernacular Chinese literature, asserted that these two stories are the most boring and pedantic of the collection.⁽¹⁶⁾ Yet despite the limited worth of the filial child stories as literary works according to modern criteria, they are important repositories of domestic values that have had a tremendous influence in Chinese civilization.

A narrative poem about a girl named "Hua Mulan" who joined the army in men's clothes and served in the military for twelve years to substitute for her aged father has been widely told and read for more than a thousand years, and for decades has been used in the standard textbook for elementary school students in Beijing. Being a filial daughter was her first step on the way to becoming a heroine. Veneration of filial piety is equally present in lyrical poetry, generally considered the most exquisite form of expression in traditional Chinese aesthetics. Meng Jiao, for example, wrote, "How can the heart of a blade of grass reward the sunlight of the spring" after describing a mother sewing earnestly for her departing son. The image of the spring sunlight and the blade of grass remains a metaphor for the mother-son relationship commonly used by Chinese men to express gratitude and love for their mothers.

Another influential story of the filial son originates in the story of Mulian, a figure of Indian Buddhist literature, who was a disciple of the Buddha and rescued his mother from the underworld with the Buddha's help.⁽¹⁷⁾ In a Chinese version of the story that was told to ordinary people in the temples during the Tang dynasty, Mulian was compared to the most famous Chinese filial sons, such as the man who cried for bamboo shoots for his mother and the man who went to the frozen river for fish for his parents.⁽¹⁸⁾ The story was also adapted into popular operas and performed from the Tang dynasty into this century. One adaptation was even stretched over more than one hundred episodes under the title Mulian saves his mother and practices filial piety.⁽¹⁹⁾ This emphasis on filial piety has been considered the result of the sinicization of Buddhism.⁽²⁰⁾ Recent research has shown, however, that early Indian Buddhists were also very concerned with the welfare of their parents.⁽²¹⁾ Nevertheless, the popularity and the development of the story of Mulian in China is a telling indication of the important influence of traditional Chinese ideas in the importation of foreign culture. In short, the Indian monk Mulian became a role model for the filial son; his story was even included in a series of Chinese-language textbooks for children printed in 1989.⁽²²⁾

In the Greek story, the gods punish the main characters because Oedipus violated the incest taboo. In the filial son stories, however, the sons are assisted by gods because of their service to their parents and their willingness to sacrifice themselves. The filial sons are provided with fish or bamboo shoots when they cannot obtain these things for their parents by any other means. In premodern times, when people generally believed in miracles, such magical events no doubt enhanced the moral meaning of these stories. The message of the story of Oedipus is a negative injunction: Do not do what Oedipus did! Do not commit parricide or incest! The message of these Chinese stories, on the other hand, is a positive one: Follow the examples of the filial sons! Be a filial son to your parents!

Stories of filial sons are marked with such exaggeration that even the most receptive modern reader feels uncomfortable. Some sons, such as the one who went to the frozen river to catch fish for his parents, ruin even their health to serve their parents, though it is clearly not necessary. As a result, these stories were criticized as "killers of the younger generation" during the anti-traditional trend among intellectuals of the 1920s. I do not want to deny the validity of this criticism. However, it may be worth our while to attempt to understand why the stories were told this way. We should consider how commonly used methods employed in traditional stories function to inculcate certain attitudes. Sometimes the exaggerated plots can strengthen the theme of a story, which is read at once as history and as allegory. The story of Oedipus is also quite extreme. How could so many accidents and coincidences happen to one man? In part, it is the exaggeration of the filial son and Oedipus stories, however absurd, that makes them so striking and memorable.

During the May Fourth movement of 1919, Chinese intellectuals strenuously criticized the concept of filial piety. They argued that xiao, as a fundamental moral standard, had supported the dictatorship of the state and an oppressive family structure for two thousand years. I agree with these criticisms. But I also want to point out that this goal was claimed forthrightly by the promoters of filial piety from the very beginning. Confucius and his disciples emphasized that filial piety was fundamental for the maintenance of a well-ordered state. They argued that a man who is devoted to his parents will consequently be loyal to his ruler. They never avoided mentioning this point. Therefore, the major divergence between such traditional scholars and the anti-traditionalist intellectuals of the May Fourth movement era is not over the manifest function of filial piety, but rather over how to evaluate the traditional political system. The focus of attention in this paper, however, is on finding some of the latent functions of xiao that its advocates did not claim and its opponents did not discuss.

Although xiao is still a commonly mentioned component of domestic morality in today's China, I have to admit that its importance has been declining. The filial son stories have been fading and their future is unpredictable. I have cited so many examples about filial piety to show how prevalent this rhetoric--with its emphasis on the respect, service, and self-sacrifice due one's parents--has been in China. It is not surprising that there is no psychological space left in the structure of the Chinese mentality for the incest and patricide of the Oedipus story. In other words, the presence of the filial son stories may help to explain the absence of the Oedipus story in China. Even though both types of stories are popular in separate regions, neither is universal.

As an obvious contrast to Oedipus, a Chinese legendary ruler named Shun, said to have lived four thousand years ago, was described as a great filial son. His name headed the list in various versions of the "biographies of filial sons." According to the historians of ancient times, Shun's filial piety was the major reason he was chosen as a ruler in remote antiquity and considered a sage in Chinese history.

The legend of Shun, including accounts of his filial conduct, is first described in the Shang shu (Book of documents), traditionally considered to have been edited by Confucius and containing some of our earliest Chinese documents and records. Mencius related the stories concerning Shun and his father and emphasized his filial piety.⁽²³⁾ Sima Qian, in his Shi ji (Records of the historian), described in detail the filial stories of Shun as an example of the merits of a worthy ruler. Shun was listed as the first filial son in a collection of stories compiled in the Later Han dynasty as well as in many later versions. In the Tang dynasty, the prominent scholar Han Yu juxtaposed Shun's name with that of his predecessor, Yao, as a symbol for the saint or perfectly moral man. At approximately the same time, Shun's story was told in a genre known as bianwen, translated by Victor Mair as "transformation texts," which were presented at Buddhist Temples during festivals and other public gatherings.⁽²⁴⁾

In the 1920s, the renowned Chinese historian Gu Jiegang questioned the authenticity of the stories of Yao and Shun, and even the existence of any such figures. Gu argued that the chapter about Shun in the Shang shu is apocryphal and that the stories of the filial Shun were written by Confucian scholars during the second century B.C. in order to promote their doctrines.⁽²⁵⁾ Gu's theory won the support of some of the anti-traditional scholars of his time. Regardless of the authorship or historical authenticity of the Shun stories, it is old enough for my purposes here to note that the stories have been widely circulated and accepted as historical in China for some two thousand years. Even if the historical Shun was not a man at all but an animal, as some scholars have argued, the stories themselves provided their readers and listeners with a moral exemplar that came to hold a prominent position in the Chinese mental landscape.

As the story goes, when the great ruler Yao was searching for a successor, a twenty-year-old commoner named Shun was nominated because of his filial reputation. At the age of thirty, Yao married his two daughters to Shun and observed how he conducted himself. Shun managed his home and village very well. Yet his wicked step-mother slandered him, urging her blind husband to murder him. The two set a devious trap, asking Shun to repair the storehouse and then starting a fire while he was still on the roof. But Shun had prepared two bamboo rain hats in advance with which he was able to jump to safety. They then asked Shun to dig a well which they filled with stones while he was working at the bottom. Again Shun escaped, this time through a secret tunnel. When Shun returned he found that his step-brother had already occupied his house and was there playing his zither. Shun's deceitful brother explained his behavior by saying that he had come to mourn for Shun. Far from being angry, Shun thanked his brother for his consideration. Throughout, Shun continued to show the proper degree of respect for his father, step-mother, and step-brother. At the age of fifty, Shun became an active ruler, formally receiving the throne eight years later.

According to the Sunzi bian (Transformation text of Shun), it was the Buddha who assisted Shun when he was in trouble.⁽²⁶⁾ When Shun was buried in the well by his father, the Buddha became a yellow dragon and dug the tunnel that allowed Shun to escape. Obviously, this kind of plot, in addition to making for a more exciting story, is also tailored to suit the atmosphere of a Buddhist temple. Of course Buddhism came to China long after Sima Qian and Mencius, not to mention the ancient period in which Shun was said to have lived. I am convinced, however, that there was already some deity involved in the early versions of the Shun legend. While it may be possible to jump safely from a roof with two bamboo hats acting as parachutes, without the intervention of a deity Shun would not have been able to quickly tunnel his way out of a deep well. It is not unlikely that Mencius and Sima Qian suppressed the role of such a deity in the legend because both of them were skeptical about the existence of supernatural beings. In the transformation text version, where the entertainment value of the story received more attention and the storytellers were Buddhists, the deity reappeared, this time as the Buddha.

On the surface, the story of Shun is entirely different from that of Oedipus, except for the fact that the protagonists are both rulers and both stories contain historical as well as mythological elements. Oedipus killed his father; Shun treated his father very well. Oedipus blinded himself; Shun miraculously cured his father's eyes. Oedipus could not flee from his tragic fate no matter how hard he tried; Shun accepted and overcame all of the difficulties he encountered with assistance from gods and received fame and the throne as a reward for his efforts. Oedipus brought a plague on his kingdom; Shun ushered in an era of peace and prosperity. Oedipus has lent his name to a "complex" driven by the subconscious desire for parricide and incest; Shun's name is invoked as an archetype for a filial son and a perfect man.

Nevertheless, if we turn our attention to the unspoken rules guiding the perception of Sophocles and his audience, we find some similarities to their Chinese counterparts. Both stories suggest common rules governing the parent-child relationship that we are supposed to follow. For example, when Oedipus learned from the oracle that he was fated to kill his father and marry his mother, he decided to leave and never return to the territory of his adopted parents who he mistakenly thought were his biological parents, all in order to avoid the "loathed fulfillment of this dreadful oracle."⁽²⁷⁾ The depth of Oedipus's fear and the gruesome conclusion to the story drive home the severe guilt and terrifying consequences of killing one's father and sleeping with one's mother. In the Sunzi bian such deeds, or even sentiments, are never mentioned. On the contrary, it is the father who tries to kill his son who, in turn, never so much as offers resistance. As for Shun's dead mother, she seems to be almost a goddess, kind and sacred. Shun respects both of his parents regardless of their behavior toward him. In short, both stories emphasize that the parent-child relationship is a set hierarchy, which all must rigidly observe in spite of any extenuating circumstances. In their stories, neither Oedipus nor Shun ever questions the rules governing the parent-child relationship. To them these rules are unalterable, even if they must pay a huge price to observe them.

The stories are also similar in being fairly extreme. Oedipus was entirely innocent in his actions while Shun's father attempted to murder him over and over. In both cases the protagonists would be largely justified in taking action against their parents. However, these stories deny that a child's innocence or a parent's mistreatment justify the transgression of rules governing parent-child relations. The assumption that the rules against incest and parricide are absolute and unconditional is indirect but strong.

Finally, both stories are not only about the parent-child relationship, parricide, and incest, but also about the process of shaping consciousness and morality. After Oedipus blinds himself, he has a long dialogue with the chorus. "How can I look my people in the face?," he cries.⁽²⁸⁾ Clearly, Oedipus does not consider himself innocent despite his initial ignorance of his doings. As for Shun, his actions stemmed not from a debt of gratitude to his father, who was after all cruel to him, but rather from his commitment to ethical principles. Both figures judge their own moral consciousness by reflecting on how they treat their parents. Human virtue and vice are thus shown to be inextricably tied to the parent-child relationship. In this relationship, both Shun and Oedipus exhibit the power of human nobility and the integrity of fundamentally moral men.

The impact of xiao in traditional China can be felt on many levels. Similarly, the Oedipus story has been interpreted from various perspectives in the cultures that propagate it. In addition, some scholars have used them for comparative studies on the characteristics of the Chinese cultural or political tradition.⁽²⁹⁾ I do not mean to reduce the meaning of the stories of filial sons or Oedipus merely to a means of preventing the family romance; in this paper, I look at both of them from a relatively narrow perspective rather than attempting a more comprehensive overview. The comparison I am conducting here is limited to the question of how people present the parent-child relationship in different ways, and the possible functions of these different approaches.

When I point out the absence of the Oedipus story in Chinese tradition, I am not denying Levi-Strauss's theory about "the prohibition of incest as a universal rule" or excluding the possibility that what happened in the Oedipus story might occur in China.⁽³⁰⁾ Chinese have recognized the dark side of the parent-child relationship. For example, as spiritual and scholarly successor of Confucius, Mencius said, "There were instances of regicides and parricides. Confucius was apprehensive and composed the Spring and autumn annals."⁽³¹⁾ But neither Confucius nor Mencius did much to elaborate or analyze this dark side. The Li ji (Book of propriety), one of the earliest and most important classics of Confucianism, has a clear statement of a theory of the origin of the li (propriety):

The parrot can speak, and yet is nothing more than a bird; the ape can speak, and yet is nothing more than a beast. Is not the mind of a man without "propriety," even though he can speak, just like that of a beast? It is because the birds and beasts do not have "propriety," that the father and son have the same female mate. Therefore, the sages established the rules of "propriety" to teach men, and cause them to observe the rules and to make a distinction between the birds, beasts and themselves.⁽³²⁾

The book obviously views the prevention of incest as a fundamental reason for rules of propriety, but it talks about incest among birds and beasts instead of human beings. Rather than exposing the family romance, the Li ji and other Confucian classics emphasized the holiness of filial piety and the importance of being a filial person. Similarly, many stories about filial sons such as Shun consistently romanticize and sanctify kinship. The storytellers seek to promote those ideals rather than offer a realistic description of actual family relations.

Avoidance of the Oedipus story cost Chinese a chance to explore the frailty and weakness of human beings and the family system in depth. However, the rosy filial son stories, to a certain extent, put distance between generations even while tying them together. It is difficult to determine for certain if the editors of these stories believed in the historical accuracy of the sacrifices and miracles depicted in the stories. But there can be little doubt that the stories enhanced readers' awe and veneration of his parents. Extreme examples of filial veneration also reminded readers of the hierarchy of the family and the distance separating the various roles within the family. The asymmetry of usage of the word xiao--it is only used to describe a child's veneration for the parents and not the other way around--points to the stratification between parents and children. All of these factors served to draw a clear line between generations, making parent and child alike realize their status in the parent-child relationship and instilling a sense of the proper distance among members of different generations in a family. While one may criticize the lack of intimacy and the rigid hierarchical nature of the traditional Chinese family, one should also recognize that this very structure may serve to prevent the "Oedipus phenomenon" from occurring.

The positive exemplar, when effective, inspires its audience, thus controlling primitive desires. Similarly, the negative example serves as a warning, thus repressing these impulses. In the second section of this article I analyzed the possible function of the Oedipus story as a negative example. The positive exemplar, such as the heroes of the filial son stories, may have a similar function, even though the meaning of these stories may ultimately involve much more.

In this essay I have taken the difference between cultures as a starting point and emphasized the diversity of the methods people use to deal with the problems they all face. But teachings such as xiao were often treated as moral law and internalized by Chinese people, sometimes with unexpected results. Jeffrey Wasserstrom has analyzed revolutions from this perspective, taking as an example the story of the martyr Zou Rong, who used being filial to one's ancestors to justify revolution against the Manchu rulers.⁽³³⁾ Another paradoxical instance occurred in the early 1980s, when the CCP used "parents may wrongly beat their children" as a metaphor to vindicate the persecution of countless ordinary Chinese people during the Cultural Revolution.⁽³⁴⁾ Use of this defense required two premises: that the government corresponds to parents; and that people should be filial to their parents unconditionally. It is ironic that after a ten-year-long revolution that attempted to destroy the "four olds" (old thought, old culture, old customs, and old habits) in order to establish a new world, those who adopted this defense still sought to derive legitimacy from the notion of filial piety.

1. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, "Gender and Revolution in Europe and Asia, Part 2: Recent Works and Frameworks for Comparative Analysis," Journal of Women's History 6.1 (1994); Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

2. E. J. Kahn, The China Hands: America's Foreign Service Officers and What Befell Them (New York: Viking Press, 1972), p. 139, fn. 3. See also Gary May, China Scapegoat: The Diplomatic Ordeal of John Carter Vincent (Washington: New Republic, 1979), p. 114.

3. Kahn, China Hands, p. 139, fn. 3. This story is retold in Sterling Seagrave, The Soong Dynasty, (New York: Harper & Row, 1985), p. 402.

4. Lu Xun, Lu Xun quanji [Collected works of Lu Xun], vol. 1 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1957), p. 324.

5. William Lyell, The Diary of a Madman and Other Stories by Lu Xun (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), p. 128.

6. Geoffrey Hughes, Swearing (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 32.

7. The story of Oedipus is not the only source in the Western canon that depicts incest. The Book of Genesis, for example, describes the daughters of Lot making their father drunk so that they might "lay with him." They are said to have done this because there were no other women available, they wanted to "preserve the seed of their father," and they feared he would refuse them if he was sober. Nonetheless, it is the Oedipus story that has become synonymous with incest, in large measure because of the influence of psychoanalysis.

8. Otto Rank, The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend: Fundamentals of a Psychology of Literary Creation, trans. Gregory C. Richter (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992).

9. The T'ang Code, trans. Wallace Johnson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).

10. Leslie White cited in W. Arens, The Original Sin (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 3.

11. See chapter 1 of Xiao jing, in The Hsiao Ching, trans. Mary Lelia Makra (New York: St. John's University Press, 1961), p. 3.

12. Xiaojing xue yuanliu (Taipei: Guoli bianyiguan, 1986), pp. 401-522.

13. David Hey, Oxford Guide to Family History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); David Herlihy, When Father Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985); Steven Ozment, Medieval Household (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983); and Anne Scott Macleod, American Childhood: Essays on Children's Literature of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: University of Georgia Press, 1994).

14. Sidney Shapiro, Outlaws of the Marsh, vol. 1 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981), p. 271.

15. Patrick Hanan, The Chinese Vernacular Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 123.

16. Shi dian tou [Rocks nod] (Shanghai: Beiyeshanfang, 1935), pp. 283-84.

17. For an overview of the Mulian story and its role in Chinese society, see Stephen Teiser, The Ghost Festival in Medieval China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988). One version of the story has been translated into English in Victor Mair, Tun-Huang Popular Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 87-121.

18. Zhou Shaoliang, ed., Dunhuang bianwen huilu (Shanghai: Shanghai chuban gongsi, 1954), pp. 206-7.

19. Zhao Jingshen, "Mulian gushi de yanbian," in Dunhuang yanjou lunwenji, vol. 2 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1982).

20. See, for example, Jiang Bin, Wu yue minjian xinyang (Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe, 1992), p. 298.

21. Gregory Schopen, "Filial Piety and the Monk in the Practice of Indian Buddhism: A Question of `Sinicization' Viewed from the Other Side," T'oung Pao 70 (1984): 110-26; and John Strong, "Filial Piety and Buddhism: The Indian Antecedents to a `Chinese' Problem," in Traditions in Contact and Change, ed. Peter Slater and Donald Wiebe (Waterloo, Ontario: Canadian Cooperation for Studies in Religion, 1983), pp. 171-86.

22. Mulian jiu mu de gushi (Taipei: Guoyuribao fushe chubanshe, 1989).

23. Mencius, trans. D. C. Lau, (London: Penguin Group, 1970), pp. 139-40.

24. Victor H. Mair, Tang Transformation Text (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), chpt. 3.

25. Gu Jiegang, Gu shi bian, vol. 1 (Beijing: Pushe, 1926).

26. Dunhuang bianwen, vol. 1 (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1968), pp. 129-35.

27. Sophocles and Oedipus, trans. Philip Vellacott (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971), p. 53.

28. Ibid., p. 91.

29. For instance, David N. Keightley says that "neither Creon in Antigone nor Oedipus in Sophocles's trilogy is presented as an unsympathetic or unremittingly evil figure," whereas in Chinese classics "last rulers of dynasties were by definition bad and those who overthrew them, whom we should unquestioningly trust, were by definition good." David N. Keightley, "Early Civilization in China," in Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, ed. Paul S. Ropp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 45. Richard H. Solomon argues that "an understanding of the politics of China may begin in Greece" and he takes the story of Oedipus as the major example. Richard H. Solomon, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 29-38.

30. See the table of contents of Claude Levi Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. James Harle Bell et al. (Boston: Beacon, 1969).

31. Mencius, trans. Lau, fn. 6, p. 114.

32. Li ji [The book of propriety], in Shisanjing zhushu, vol. 5 (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1973), p. 15.

33. Wasserstrom, "Gender and Revolution": 116.

34. Some high officials used this expression in their talks. We can also see this metaphor in the novel Bu li [Bolshevik's greetings], by Wang Meng in 1979. The protagonist says, "The Party is our mother. The mother sometimes beats her children. But the children never remember and hate their mother for this." Wang meng wenji, vol. 3 (Beijing: Huayi chubanshe, 1993), p. 35.