ARLT: Chinese Imagination Essay -- essays research papers

Repay your love and friendship Chinese literature, for example, ancient poetry, lyrics, and traditional Chinese stories, reveals many different kinds of good personalities of people. According to a famous ancient Chinese philosopher, Confucius ( ¿Ãƒâ€"Ãâ€"Ó), men are born to be kind (ÈËÃâ€" ®Ã‚ ³Ãƒ µÃ‚ ©o à Ãƒâ€Ã‚ ±Ã‚ ¾Ãƒâ€°Ãƒâ€ ). Everyone has his or her own good qualities and sometimes they are just hidden and needed to be explored and discovered. In traditional China, people had a strong sense of repayment (ˆÃ ³Ã‚ ´Ãƒ °). People who do not have this ability to repay others who have helped them before are usually being looked down on. The sense of repayment is perhaps a product of a good friendship or love. And the boundary of love here in this case, is not only about the love between couples but all different kinds of love also, for instance, the love between family members. Therefore, repayment is in fact tied in with the theme of filial piety. People ¡Ã‚ ¯s devotion to and their respect for their parents or elders are actually a form of repayment. In the story,  ¡Ã‚ °The Courtesan Li Wa, ¡Ã‚ ± Li Wa is surely very respectful to her  ¡Ã‚ °mother ¡Ã‚ ± though she is not her real mother who gives birth to Li Wa. While Li Wa and the young man are taking a rest at Li Wa ¡Ã‚ ¯s aunt ¡Ã‚ ®s place, she gets a message that her mother is ill, suffering very badly and cannot even recognize the people in the house. Li Wa, without a doubt, decides to go back immediately to see her mother without even considering the young man. Though I have to say that I personally doubt that this is in fact a proper and an appropriate way to handle this situation, Li Wa has certainly shown her respect and devotion to her so-called  ¡Ã‚ °mother ¡Ã‚ ±. A while later in the story, the young man fails to find Li Wa and her aunt. He has been roaming about and at some point close to death due to illness. He ends up being employed by the mortuaries to sing. On one occasion, the young man ¡Ã‚ ¯s father happens to be there and an old servant recognizes the young man. His father takes him out of there, stripped him, flogs him with a horse whip several hundred times and leaves him for dead. The young man does not end up in death because the youth ¡Ã‚ ¯s music instructor sends someone to keep and eye on him. At this point of the story, the young man ¡Ã‚ ¯s relationship with his father has already broken and the young man ¡Ã‚ ¯s father even thinks that his son is beaten to death by himse... ... Kuo goes to visit them. Here at this point in the story, Kuo repays Wu for all he has done to rescue himself back in the days when Kuo is captured by the barbarians. He carries Wu ¡Ã‚ ¯s and his wife ¡Ã‚ ¯s bones back to their native place along with their son Wu T ¡Ã‚ ¯ien-yu and on the road he once says,  ¡Ã‚ °Yung-ku (Wu Pao-an ¡Ã‚ ¯s style name) labored for ten years for my sake. Carrying his bones for a little while is the least gesture I can make to show my gratitude. ¡Ã‚ ± After they arrive, Kuo shows his respect for Wu as if Wu is his father and does what a son would do when his father dies and  ¡Ã‚ °every detail of the burial arrangements is the same as when he has buried his father. ¡Ã‚ ± Kuo treats his benefactor as if he is his father. Here it reveals that a true friendship tie in with filial piety. Kuo also offers Wu T ¡Ã‚ ¯ien-yu his own post as a further repayment to his  ¡Ã‚ °father ¡Ã‚ ±. The story  ¡Ã‚ °Wu Pao-an Ransoms His Friend ¡Ã‚ ± discloses the connection between friendship, repayment, and filial piety. Between people with high quality of humanity, there is a genuine friendship which acts as a bond. And this bond leads to repayment when there are favors to be repaid. A form of repayment is being filial.