Visit To Han China Essay, Research Paper

Your visit to China certainly did sound interesting. But life outside the palaces and cities is not the same as you have seen. I have visited many villages around the country and I’ve noticed a large difference.

The men do seem to have control over the women, because that’s part of the Confucianism ideology. But in reality, the women have complete control over household affairs. When the men are away at work, it’s the women who take care of the children and other household duties. And if the family is a wealthy and has a lot of properties (including slaves) it’s mostly the women that give to the orders and supervise the workers on the land. In other ways the men do have control over the women. The women cannot be disobedient to her in-laws, they cannot be jealous of other concubines, they have to be perfectly healthy and give birth to males. Otherwise if the women fail to fulfill these requirements, the men have the right to divorce and get another one. The only ways a husband cannot divorce his wife no matter what happens is if the wife goes through a 3 year morning period after the husband’s father’s death, or if the wife has no relatives to turn to or if the husband was poor and when he married his wife he became rich. The women do not have the right to divorce no matter what the circumstances are, the only way for to free themselves is to commit suicide which makes the man’s family look bad therefore the man’s family has to make sure that the wife is not very uncomfortable.

The people are devoted to Confucianism, and it was mostly seen in bureaucratic families and in universities in cities around china. There is also Daoism, the daosists have adopted some of the confucianists ideas but their attitude toward life can be seen in the accepting and yielding, the joyful and the carefree sides of the Chinese character. It is also characterized by a positive, active attitude toward the occult and the metaphysical. Some people also practice Buddhism, which is somewhat related to Daoism, it originated from India. Chinese Buddhists teach indestructibility of the soul. They also teach the theory of karma, the values of charity and compassion and the need to suppress the passions. There seem to be a virtual symbiosis between Taoism and Buddhism and a common propagation of the means for attaining immortality through various ascetic practices. It was widely believed that Lao-tzu, the founder of Taoism, had been reborn in India as the Buddha.