The Question of Love— Young People and Old
People; Smash the Policy of Parental Arrangement
(November 25,1919)
I often feel that in matters of all kinds, old people generally take a position of
opposition to young people. From such things in daily life as eating and dressing, to
feelings about society and the nation, and attitudes toward mankind in the world at
large, they are always drearily, rigidly, and coweringly passive. Their views are always
ingratiatingly humble. Their position is always negative. I think that if young and old
are none the less able to live together, it is mostly because of a relationship of mutual
benefit. The old rely on the young to provide their food and clothing, while the young
rely on the elderly to provide experience and wisdom. Although you may feel that this
is an “extreme” way of putting it, this very peculiar phenomenon does exist in China,
thanks to an evil system and evil customs. It is a fact that there are fundamental
differences between the life of the old and that of the young. This proposition has
physiological and psychological foundations. The reason why human life is different for
the old and for the young lies in the differences between the physiology and psychology
of the old and of the young. Generally speaking, human life is the satisfaction of
physiological and psychological desires. Desires differ according to differences in sex,
differences in age, differences in occupation, and differences in beliefs. The difference
in desires resulting from age differences is, however, the most pronounced. This has
already been proven by both Eastern and Western scholars.
We have many different kinds of desires, such as the desire to eat, the desire for
sex, the desire to play, the desire for fame, and the desire for power and influence
(also called the desire to dominate), and so on. Of these, the desires for food and sex
are fundamental, the former to maintain the “present” and the latter to open up the
“future.” Of these two desires, there is no absolute difference in the desire for food
according to age. Sexual desire does, however, differ with age.
The expression of sexual desire, generally speaking, is love. Young people see the
question of love as being very important, while old men don’t think it’s worth worrying
about. The relationship between husband and wife was originally meant to be totally
centered around love, with everything else being subor167 Yu sui. This is an allusion to the proverb: “Ning wei yu sui, bu wei wa quan” (It is better to be
a shattered vessel of jade than an unbroken piece of pottery) — in other words, better a glorious death
than a life of dishonor.

dinate. Only in China is this question put to one side. When I was young, I saw
many people getting married. I asked them what they were up to. They all replied
that a person takes a wife to have someone to make tea, cook, raise pigs, chase away
the dogs, spin, and weave. At this I asked, wouldn’t it be a lot easier just to hire a
servant? It wasn’t until later that I heard that people got married to “carry on the
family line.” This left me still perplexed. And right down to today, when you look at
what society says about marriage, you still can’t find even a hint of anything about
love. Society does not regard love as being important, and thus, except for the slave’s
work of making tea, cooking, and so on, marriage is nothing but that base life of fleshly
desire. (What we call sexual desire, or love, involves not only the satisfaction of the
physiological urge of fleshly desire, but the satisfaction of a higher order of desires —
spiritual desires and desires for social intercourse.) The slave’s work of making tea and
cooking is a result of capitalism. Old people pay no attention to love, only to “eating.”
Thus when their sons want to take a wife, they say they are taking a daughter-in-law.
Their goal in getting a daughter-in-law is to have the daughter-in-law do the slave’s
work for them. A passage in the Book of Rites says, “Even if a son is very pleased with
his wife, if his parents are not, he repudiates her. A son should not be pleased with his
wife.”168 This is firm proof of the fact that the question of love between the son and the
daughter-in-law is to be put to one side, and that a wife is only for doing the slavework.
When a woman is given in marriage, her parents don’t say that they have chosen a
husband for their daughter, but rather that they have selected a happy son-in-law. A
“happy son-in-law” means only that this will make the parents happy. It doesn’t matter
whether their daughter will be happy or not. And even all the dowry payments are just
so that they themselves can eat well. In short, capitalism and love are in conflict with
one another. Old men are in conflict with love. Thus there is a tight bond between old
men and capitalism, and the only good friends of love are young people. Wouldn’t you
say that old men and young people are in conflict with each other?
Observing that the Zhao family forced their daughter to commit suicide, Mr.
Pingzi169 strongly opposes parents’ controlling the marriage of their children, but he
does not bring out the real reasons for this position. The arguments of others like
168 Mr. Xinman’s identity is unknown. He was one of three authors whose articles were published in
the Dagongbao under the heading “Public Opinion on the Suicide of Miss Zhao” on November 20, 1919.
In his piece, he praised Miss Zhao for being a resolute person who refused to bow to circumstances, and
criticized the “erroneous arguments” of Mao and others, who failed to grasp that her suicide (not suicide
in general) was a “joyous event.”
this section as paragraph 16 of Chapter X (M&noires sur les bienstances et les ctrtmonies, Vol. I, p.
634), translates the relevant lines as follows: “Lors meme qu’un fils est tres satisfait de sa femme, si ses
parents ne le sont pas, il la rdpudie. Lorsqu’un fils n’est pas satisfait de sa femme, si ses parents lui
disent, ‘Elle nous sen vraiment bien,’ il continue & remplir envers elle ses devoirs d’6poux jusqu’& la
fin de la vie, sans se relacher.”