6 - Going forward bravely

Summary

Textbook renderings of filial obedience (xiao), and of parent-child reciprocity (yang), are said to be ‘ordinary knowledge’. This is partly because the parent-child cycle of yang, enacted through transfers of food and money, is an on-going feature of communal life, something which children could not possibly overlook. And yet, as one reads the texts, and thinks about life in Angang, important differences emerge. I have mentioned, for instance, that parents seem disinclined to instruct their children in morality (as the texts imply they should). Parents may also, due to their own lack of education, or their participation in seemingly wasteful social transactions, be unsuitable patterns for their children to emulate. And while textbooks stress the form and spirit of support for one's parents, interest in the community seems more narrowly focused on the provision of money and food.

The texts in this chapter suggest another important difference. Parents in Angang take many steps to protect their children from different kinds of harm. They perhaps resemble the textbook ‘anxious mother’ who does whatever is possible for her child (although the texts scarcely mention religion, and certainly not spirit mediums). Parents, of course, want their children to survive, and any number of reasons might be given for this: love, attachment, the cultural valorisation of longevity, the commitment to patrilineal ideals, and so on. We might also say: parents want children to survive because they are linked with them in a perpetual cycle of yang, which should not be disturbed. Supplication for the ‘absence of disturbances’ (pieng-ari) is often directly focused on children, who must endure for the sake of the family.