Child and Parent.
Public sentiment, especially in the older times of China, was strongly against the individual who would not accord to his parents due respect and obedience. No matter how old, how educated, or how wealthy he might become this respect and obedience was still due his parents. Confucius taught: "That parents when alive should be served according to propriety, that when dead they should be buried according to propriety, and that they should be sacrificed to according to propriety."[86]
"If a son should murder his parent, either father or mother, and be convicted of the crime, he would not only be beheaded, but his body would be mutilated by being cut into small pieces; his house would be razed to the ground, and the earth under it would be dug up for several feet deep; his neighbors living on the right and the left would be severely punished; his principal teacher would suffer capital punishment; the district magistrate of the place would be deprived of his office and disgraced; the prefect, the governor of the province, and the viceroy would all be degraded three degrees in rank. All this is done and suffered to mark the enormity of the crime of a parricide."[87]