A Cultivating Jia-Guo Qinghuai: Loyalty, Tax Obligation, and the Commendation of Virtue in Traditional Chinese Family Education

Abstract

Traditionally, China has placed considerable emphasis on family education, particularly the cultivation of children's sense of home and country (jia-guo qinghuai). By examining aspects such as the idea of "loyalty to the sovereign," the active payment of taxes, and the praise of virtues, this paper explores how education in the feelings of home and country was practiced in China at that time. The pedagogical logic rested on a structural premise: under the "family–state isomorphism" (jia-guo tonggou) of imperial China, the household was treated as the basic unit of the state, and the cultivation of sentiment within the family was understood as preparation for service to the realm, so that "moving filial piety to become loyalty" (yi xiao zuo zhong) formed the central mechanism of moral transmission. Loyalty to the sovereign was therefore taught not as an abstract political doctrine but as a concrete ethical obligation embedded in lineage instructions. The Chen clan of Xunyang, for example, instructed descendants that "from ministers and grandees down to the common people of the marketplace, all hold the duty of a subject and should exhaust themselves in loyalty," and required scholars to "understand the principle of loyalty to the sovereign and love of the country". The Yan clan admonished its heirs to "observe the ancients' steadfastness in office, to give their lives when danger arises, and never to forget honest remonstrance for the benefit of the state", while the Qian clan's instruction, condensed into the maxim "keep loyalty and filial piety in the heart," was enacted at the highest level when Qian Chu surrendered his kingdom to the Song in 978, bringing eighty-six counties peacefully under unification. Tax payment was the practical test of this sentiment: household instructions routinely equated timely remittance with loyal citizenship. The Fang genealogy of Shexian warned that "in all matters be prompt, and grain-tax above all must not be delayed," and the Wang clan of Wuyuan taught that paying taxes early constitutes the loyalty of "forgetting private interest for the public and forgetting the family for the state". Zhu Xi's widely transmitted maxim, "once the national levy is paid early, even if the purse is empty, one attains supreme joy," was echoed in Huizhou by the popular saying "read a few more years of books, pay one year's tax earlier". Praise of virtues operated as the external reinforcement of this pedagogy. The Zheng clan of Pujiang, whose 168-article Zheng Family Code governed a household that lived and ate together for over three centuries, was repeatedly honored by imperial commendation from the Song through the Ming, and among its 173 officials not one was disciplined for corruption. Such commendation converted family virtue into public recognition, teaching children that the praise of the sovereign and the community was the proper reward of moral conduct.