My undergraduate studies in philosophy led me to read and research Chinese thinkers of the 20th century. Serendipitously and happily it also gave me more to talk about with my grandmother who also happened to know and respect many of them. During Covid, as I wasn't able to see her, she kept a book for me and kept telling me that once I could see her she would bestow it upon me, temporarily of course.

這本書叫 文藝欣賞： 五四以來的中國文學， 也應該已經絕版了。拿出來時我的婆婆非常小心的用雙手捧著，這本書的裝訂破爛不堪，每一頁都發黃了，彷彿脆葉。 我心中就明白這可是一個家傳的書，多麼不容易！我好開心決定努力的看，學習。

This piece caught my eye because it's a theme that I've been thinking much about myself. Lin asks, where does the sense of familial piety come from in Chinese culture? He begins with an interesting confluence of cultural stories, asking what Adam would've been like if he was like BaoYu, 紅樓夢‘s famous male character who enjoyed femininity and craved to be like women who are “水做的” and complained that men were “泥做的”.

泥和水是互相需要的“亞當開始裂開了；於是上帝哪一點水，把泥土在塑造起來；著滲進亞當的水便是夏娃；亞當的身體裡有了夏娃；其生命才是完成的。” 男女之間的關係是密切關係，相互互助的。

In this rewriting, Lin Yutang is clearly demonstrates his unique feminist perspective, there is a mutual need for one another in this light rather than a more parochial understanding that the male is more "whole" than the woman because Eve came out of Adam's rib. This feminism to Lin is in fact related to the reverence of the family structure and ideal.  I think this is particularly important to note because in the West it is often thought that feminism is contradictory to the nominally 'conservative' nuclear family structure. In Western thought it is understood that the individual female's career is often at odds with family obligations. Indeed in Simone de Beauvoir's renowned book The Second Sex, her entire opening thesis is that women are bound to the old due to biological patterns such as menstruation and pregnancy and caring for children. To de Beauvoir womanly and familial roles are what hold women from modernity, and thus much of second wave feminism can be seen as the fight for independence away from these obligations and with that equal rights in the legal sphere. But when family is heralded as more important than individual the motherly role is as if not more significant to the family structure, because of her need to raise the next generation.

But I digress, let's return to the question first of family. 林語堂在文章中寫道中國人對家族的尊重比喻西方的宗教。但是跟祖先磕頭及祭拜不是為了討價還價，尋求好的幸運，而只是跟長輩磕頭表示尊重及希望長輩能夠多多保護看好祖孫。就是一個爸爸媽媽，外婆外孫的關係。人就是中國人的神，但是神也就是人。 To Chinese people, the relationship to family is sacred, and transcendental.