Èrshísì Xiào or The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars is a classic text of Confucian filial piety written during the Yuan Dynasty (1260 –1368), and has been used as an example of how Chinese children should honour their parents.

HE LAY DOWN ON ICE IN SEARCH OF CARP

One of the strangest, this: how a boy mistreated

by his stepmother still tried to satisfy her cravings

for carp, sought out the frozen lake and thawed the ice with

naked flesh, brought home two pregnant ones

for a pot of soup. At eight, I learnt this fable from

my mother’s lips, offered immediately to out-do this filial son,

though there was no ice to be found all across the city –

our temperate winters incapable of frost.

Years later, I wonder why my mother did not mention

hypothermia or the possibility of drowning, did not

invite me to wonder at the boy’s lack

of self-respect, did not consider how his body

deserved its own morsel of warmth, how his fingers

should never have been bait.

HE FED THE MOSQUITOES WITH HIS BLOOD

Another begins with a sacrifice: a boy too poor

to afford mosquito nets offers his blood as nectar in his parents’

stead, as he sits on their bed on hot summer nights to keep

them safe from the unbearable scorch

of inflamed skin. I read this alone as a teenager,

my Chinese now oxidised as black tea, capable

of steeping in fabled warnings. Once more, I detect

how dispensable the child’s body is, how right it is that he

suffers for an ideological wound, how his parents

might have slept fitfully that night, roused by their child’s

cries as the mosquitoes encircled him, or perhaps

blinking back a tear while thinking how good

their boy is, how proper this bloody

business of proving one’s love.

HE DRESSED UP TO AMUSE HIS PARENTS

        No longer a boy, but an old man, dressed up

        as a child to amuse his elderly parents, his fists

        adorned with toys: a wooden stick, a piece of polished

        stone. This isn’t the worst fable amongst the twenty-

        four, but it makes me rage, because I am now

        twenty-four, no longer in need

        of dolls, though my mother yearns

        for my feet to shrink to the size of her

        open palms, and for the rest

        of me to follow. Some days I cannot be her

        child again, although I pacify arguments

        and tears with a playful voice

        that pleases, if only to reassure her –

        and to say that love

        is patient, love is kind.