What is the favorite Holiday for Japanese school girls?
Erection Day.
FUSHENG, China -- The daughter-in-law smashes the cockroach under her foot and rolls open the rusted metal doors to the garage. Light spills onto a small figure huddled on a straw mattress in a dank room. A curious face peers out.
The face is the most infamous in this village tucked away in the lush green mountains of southwest China. It's the face of Kuang Shiying's 94-year-old mother-in-law - better known as the little old lady who sued her own children for not taking care of her.
The drama that is playing out inside this ramshackle house reflects a wider and increasingly urgent dilemma. The world's population is aging fast, due to longer life spans and lower birth rates, and there will soon be more old people than young for the first time in history. This demographic about-turn has left families and governments struggling to decide: Who is responsible for the care of the elderly?
A handful of countries, such as India, France and Ukraine, require adult children to financially support their parents, mandating what was once a cultural given. Similar laws are in place in 29 U.S. states, Puerto Rico and most of Canada, though they are little known and rarely enforced because government funds help support the old. In Singapore, parents can sue their adult children for an allowance; those who fail to comply can face six months in jail.
In China, where aid is scarce and family loyalty is a cornerstone of society, more than 1,000 parents have already sued their children for financial support over the last 15 years. But in December, the government went further, and amended its elder care law to require that children also support their parents emotionally. Children who don't visit their parents can be taken to court - by mom and dad.
The law pits the expectations of society against the complexities of family and puts courts in the position of regulating the relationship between parent and child.
Which then begs the question: How do you legislate love?
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Zhang Zefang hardly looks like the vindictive matriarch many assume she must be. A tiny woman with blotchy skin, she stares at visitors through half-blinded eyes.
Zhang is one of about 3,800 people who live in the village of Fusheng, where life seems frozen in a long-ago era. Mothers trudge up steep roads with babies in bamboo baskets strapped to their backs. Farmers balance poles across their shoulders to lug crops over hills and past orange groves. The pace is slow and the atmosphere placid.
But inside Kuang and Zhang's home, there is war.
Resentment hangs in the air, acrid and sharp like the stench from the urine-filled bucket next to Zhang's bed. The cluttered storage space she calls home is as loveless as it is lightless. This is the epicenter of a family feud that erupted amid accusations of lying, of ungratefulness, of abuse and neglect and broken promises.
Zhang wants you to know this: She never wanted to take her children to court. She never wanted any of this.
"I never thought about whether my kids would take care of me when I was old," she says. "I just focused on taking care of them."
Her eyes begin to water. Inside her room, there is no heat to ward off the damp chill, no window to the outside world. Zhang spends her days alone in the dark, accompanied only by the roaches, the mess and the memories of a life that started out tough and seems destined to end the same way.
She has all the time in the world to tell her side of the story. From the shadows, she begins to speak.
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It used to be in China that growing old meant earning the respect of the young, and the idea of filial piety, or honoring your parents, was instilled from birth. Parents cared for their children, and their children later cared for them. Neither side had a choice.
A Chinese proverb calls filial piety "the first among 100 virtues," and the ancient philosopher Confucius credited it as the bedrock of social harmony. Examples of family loyalty abound: A popular song urges grown children to visit their parents often. Communities celebrate Seniors' Day and hold "best children" contests, complete with cash prizes. One county even made filial piety a condition for the promotion of local officials.
Generations of Chinese read the classic morality guide, "The Twenty-Four Filial Exemplars," where sons strangle tigers, let mosquitoes feast on their blood and proudly scrub bedpans for the sake of their parents. (A modern, somewhat more practical version of the guide advises children to call their parents regularly and spend holidays with them.)
As a 2008 bulletin from the U.S. aging advocacy group AARP put it: "For thousands of years, filial piety was China's Medicare, Social Security and long-term care, all woven into a single family virtue."
This is the world Zhang was born into, on Aug. 15, 1919.
She was of little use to a family of poor farmers, so her parents married her off at 14. Her husband died of dysentery, and she found herself a widow with two little girls and her husband's mother to support.
But her mother-in-law set her free. You don't have to take care of me, she told Zhang.
Zhang quickly remarried. Her new husband, a furniture maker, was too poor to support her, so they moved in with his parents.
Her new in-laws expected her to look after them. And that's when her nightmare truly began.
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"She's not making sense!" Kuang snaps.
Zhang, the target of Kuang's ire, is hunched on her bed, mouth set in a grim line. She barely acknowledges her daughter-in-law's insult. In fact, she barely acknowledges her at all.
Both women are fighting for their audience, though Kuang's ear-splitting staccato often drowns out Zhang's hushed monotone. Kuang hovers over her mother-in-law, interjecting constant critiques: Zhang is messing up the story, Zhang cannot remember a detail, even if she is in the midst of delivering it.
At the moment, they are arguing about Zhang's age when her first husband died. Zhang is struggling ... Was she 24? Or was it 21?
"Don't make up nonsense!" a frustrated Kuang says, voice rising. "It was 22! IT WAS 22!"
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Zhang is crying. It's hard to tell if the tears are linked to the miseries of her past or her present.
