7 - Divining children

Summary

Textbook mothers not only give their sons permission to die or ‘give up their body-persons’ (xianshen) for the nation, they also inform them that to do so would be the finest expression of filial obedience. The quandary, however, is that a patriotic death, no matter how honourable, might also bring to an end the flow of blood, food and money within a family. This is not my interpretation, but rather a distinctive line of reasoning within the Nationalist tradition. The argument is that Chinese dedication to the family, because of its power, undermines the nation, as spelt out succinctly by Sun Yat-sen himself: ‘for the nation there has never been an instance of the supreme spirit of sacrifice. The unity of the Chinese people has stopped short at the clan and has not extended to the nation’ (n.d.:2). Even when school texts concerning patriotic sacrifice are not read literally (as stories of ‘dying for the nation’), the problem of competing loyalties remains. For they draw attention to the connexion of children with what I have described as the patrilineal nation. That is, they make important an identification which contends with family loyalties, and which might undermine the cycle of commitment which parents seek to protect.

In this chapter and the next, I want to describe in greater detail some of the ways in which this protection is sought, especially through visits to spirit mediums, and through participation in rituals of various kinds. My point is not that these activities are somehow directed against what is taught to children in school, but rather that they make apparent different sets of identifications and loyalties.