A Noble Deed in the Mandarin Banquet: The Moral Cultivation of Filial Piety in Eastern Han Dynasty
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The story of Lu Ji’s noble deed, namely Hiding Mandarins For His Mother, is one of the most widely spread moral tales of filial piety in Chinese history. Twenty-four examples of filial duty scholars have focused on the interpretation of his virtue with Confucianism axiology while neglecting the political significance that filial duty has in that story. To study the historical impact that moral exhortation had through the up and fall of empires, this article investigates the general social environment of the late years of the Eastern Han Dynasty, mainly focusing on the social backgrounds of two great noble clans. Lu's Clan and Yuan's Clan had both built their unique family charisma and reputations. Lu Ji's behavior was coined into a virtue standard by descendants while Yuan Shu's turned out as a failure. The contrast between the two is argued in this article, to be an appropriate case of how moral cultivation is constructed in the East Han dynasty, which is far earlier than the time scholars accomplished moral paragons according to historical or virtual events. Through background, contextual and behavioral analysis of this event, it can be concluded that the so-called noble deed was not only a performance of Chinese traditional emphasis on filial piety but also of great political significance to the two Clans at that time. The prominence of political virtue surpassed the ethical value to a greater extent if a certain dichotomy has to be drawn for these two intertwined categories.
Source: Herança
Author: Simeng Zhang
Institution: The University of Texas at Austin
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $539
OpenAlex ID: W4408913480