Let me get directly to the point. I chose to answer this question because I believe there is really nothing more important than honoring your father and mother, no matter what your circumstances or theirs. Even if, as is often the case that they don’t understand you, your studies, your ambitions and you are trying as hard as you can to live a life completely different from theirs, it is still important. Very important.
The picture below is taken from the window of the house where I grew up. When I was younger, I could think of nothing else but getting my “freedom” to leave there and build a new life of my own. This is natural, and there really would be limited opportunity for me there anyway - living in the country on a horse and cattle ranch in America.
But, as I’ve gotten older, I realize this place is still important to me, and my father and brother still live there. They really don’t know too many of the details of my career in the military, in the national government in Washington D.C. or my many years working for Wall Street firms. But, that’s ok. We’re still a family, and I want to be a good son. So, I go back there as often as I can and reassure them they have my respect even though my life has been much different than theirs, and I did it all myself with little or no help. I moved away when I was 17, lived in Europe, worked and paid for most of my own education and built a career or two.
(Me on the right with my brother and father on my family land in the American Midwest)
（我和我的父亲和弟弟在我的家乡-照片右边的是我）
Though I wasn’t always quick to tell people I came from the middle of nowhere, I am honest about it even though to some societal strati I am thereby excluded. I’m certainly neither from an elite background - though my father does have a Ph.D and has been somewhat successful - nor did I ever reach the heights of the legendary self-made millionaire of the 1920s exemplified by the character in the Great Gatsby book and movie. You may have seen it. Gatsby was, like me, from the middle of nowhere in the American Midwest. He built a huge fortune - a self-made millionaire - but, he never liked to admit or talk about his humble beginnings. He, broke from his family and never really communicated with them. They of course had no means to help him on his way up, and once he was there he just wanted to forget them.
When Gatsby was killed, no one came to his funeral except one friend and Gatsby’s elderly father who traveled by train with some difficulty to his funeral. I wonder if Gatsby had known this beforehand would he have had more respect for his parents.
But, you don’t have to take my word for it that we must try hard to honor parents. It has been a key teaching in many world philosophies. It is implied that we need to be reminded of this because it can be difficult for all the reasons I’ve mentioned above. But, it is consistently presented as of key importance.
(A quote from the Christian bible: “If you honor your father and mother, ‘things will go well for you, and you will have a long life on the earth’”)
（基督教的圣经中有一句话：“如果你尊敬你的父母，万事于你皆会顺利，你的命也将长久”）
(Confucious: “Respect for parents is the highest duty of civic life”)
（孔子的话，大意是：“尊敬父母是生活的最高责任”）
I have written in previous answers how I believe one of the ways China is stronger than America is the strength of Chinese families. Even though the divorce rate is climbing in China, it is still lower than the US. Chinese culture is a major strength of China, and I hope it is not eroded by modern ways of living and working.
In 2010 in China two brothers in their 50’s built a home-made cart to transport their mother on a very long tour of China and eventually to Taiwan. She had always wanted to see China and her husband had promised her he would take her to see the many sites she dreamed of. Sadly, he died before he got the chance, and so her sons left their families and work and built her the cart. She was always carsick in automobiles. The picture below is of their arrival in Fuzhou. A lot of things may change in the China in the future, but I hope the respect for parents that is so exemplified by this story never completely dies.
(Photo of the brothers pulling their mother in a home-made cart. The newspaper title is “Fueled by filial piety” and these words reference the teachings of Confucius on the same topic)
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