The ancients said: "Filial piety comes first." This means that "filial piety" is the first of all virtues, the foundation of people, filial piety, as the essence of traditional culture, one of the traditional Chinese virtues, has been considered the most basic moral code for human beings since ancient times.
However, at the same time, we must also understand a historical fact that the Chinese nation did not have filial piety at the beginning, filial piety gradually developed from barbaric customs, with the improvement of economic level and scientific and technological level, the solution of the problem of the elderly has become more and more civilized, which also has the traditional Chinese virtues that we all praise today. So, what violations of filial piety have occurred in Chinese history? That's what we're going to talk about today.
Speaking of this topic, we have to mention the legend of ancient China about "abandoning the old tomb and sending the dead kiln". Legend has it that during the reign of Qin Shi Huang, because of the large-scale construction, perennial labor and wealth, resulting in low productivity at that time, grain production declined, so that there was not enough food to eat, and when food could not meet the survival of all people, they could only choose to sacrifice some people to reduce the consumption of food, so the old man with no labor value became the kind of person who was abandoned.
After many people talked about alleviating food consumption by abandoning the elderly without labor, the emperor issued a rule called "Sixty Return Warehouses" - all old people who were on the 60-year-old flower armor would be executed, and the entire family of the offender would be sentenced to death. One of the ways to execute the 60-year-old is to bury alive, specially build a living tomb, shape crock pot, the old man will be sent into this tomb by the family, and leave a certain amount of food, so that the old man will fend for himself, generally after the food is eaten, the old man finally froze and starved in the cold tomb and died, this way is also known as "flower shell burial".
It is said that when such a morally offensive decree was first issued, the people complained and expressed their opposition, and for a time there was a great disturbance, but after all, this was a legend, and the relevant things did not appear in the history, so it was difficult to distinguish between serious and false. In the legend, after the "sixty warehouses" regulations were issued, although most of the people thought that such an act was too contrary to human nature, but in order to save the lives of others in the family, forced by the imperial authority, they could only obediently implement it, and even the old people who were victims joined this process, they did not want to be a burden to their children, and they did not resent or even actively participate in the abandonment of their children. During this period, the son of a family could not bear to let his old father suffer at such an age, but did not dare to openly disobey this decree, so after sending his father to the tomb on the mountain, he did not abandon his father, but let him live here temporarily, and then quietly provided for the old father.
This went on until the East Window Incident, when the Jiaotong State sent emissaries to worship and presented a strange animal to Qin Shi Huang, and the envoy of the Jiaotong State said to Qin Shi Huang: "If anyone in the great power can recognize what this animal is, we will always bow down to you and the two countries will never fight." As soon as this condition was uttered, it caused an uproar in the imperial court, but no one in the Manchu Dynasty Wenwu knew about this animal, so Qin Shi Huang ordered people to paint the appearance of this strange beast, post it all over the country, release the imperial list, and claim that if someone could tell what kind of animal it was, there would be a heavy reward. This also allowed the filial son who quietly provided for his old father to see the imperial list, he told his father as an interesting thing when he went to deliver food to his father, and also took the portrait of the beast to his father, unexpectedly, when he was young, his father, who traveled to many places, went to the jiaotong country and recognized the strange beast on the map called the west rat, although it was larger, it was still afraid of cats.
So the father let the son hold a cat to unveil the emperor's list, the son was brought into the hall by the attendant, he took the cat out, the western rat was frightened to flee around as soon as he saw the cat, which was very clear who lost and who won, and finally jiaotong guo also had to fulfill his promise and bow to the Qin Dynasty. After that, Qin Shi Huang wanted to reward this unveiler, but the unveiler did not want any reward, but said that he had provided for his father, and explained that this time it was his father who recognized this strange beast, and finally bluntly said that he was guilty and asked the emperor to forgive the crime, Qin Shi Huang was also very emotional after hearing it, and thought that although people had no labor value when they were old, they were still very wise, so they ordered the abolition of the decree of "returning the warehouse for sixty years".