What Is Filial Piety? Chinese Man Dresses As His Dead Sister For 20 Years To Help Cure Mentally Unfit Mother

In what can be called as the latest example of "filial piety" in China, a video about a man in his 50s taking care of his mother has gone viral on Chinese social media platforms.

According to the video, the man has been dressing as his dead sister for 20 years to help his mentally unstable mother cope with her daughter's death.

The short movie shot by Pear Video, a short video platform based in China, has garnered over 4 million views on Weibo alone and is also being shared by major news portals.

The man, who was not named in the video, is from Guilin in the Guangxi region. He is seen to be wearing a traditional cheongsam dress while looking after his elderly mother. He said he decided to dress as a woman after his mother began to show signs of mental illness following her daughter's death.

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"The first time I dressed as a woman she was so happy, so I kept doing it," he told Pear Video. He added: "I've basically been living as a woman ever since. I don't own any men's clothing."

The man said he supports himself and his aged mother by playing the flute and clarified he didn't care what others thought of his cross-dressing. "This is my family's business, if you don't like the way it looks then don't look," he said.

"I'm doing this for my mother. Why would I be afraid of people laughing at me?" he added.

After the video was posted on Weibo, some praised the man, saying they were moved by the son's behavior which was "truly filial."

One user commented: "To make his mother happy, he dressed as a woman for 20 years. It doesn't matter how you view this, you have to praise this man for his filial piety!"

The concept of filial piety dates back to 400 BC and is a core virtue of Confucianism, described in the early works of China's best-known philosopher. The concept was and still is a value based on principles of hierarchy, obligation and obedience. This was the foundation of Chinese family structure and of the society as a whole, according to the Greater China Journal.

The underlying principle of this concept is that parents gave life, food, clothes and education to their children. For all the good things received from parents, it is the duty of the children to take care of them in their old age and make them proud.

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One of China's most renowned literary works on filial piety is the "Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety," written during the Yuan dynasty 600 years ago. The work includes examples of filial piety such as a woman who breast feeds her toothless stepmother, a son who tastes his father’s excrement to test for illness, and another man who sits naked at his parents’ bedside to prevent them being bitten by mosquitoes.

However, critics say decades of rapid economic growth in China has resulted in hundreds of millions leaving their parents behind and migrating to other places in search of work, a report said.

This has also led to increase in cases of suicide among the elderly people; in some rural areas, suicide rates have increased five-fold over the last two decades, state-run media have reported, with family neglect seen as a major cause.