16 Fish, Winter, Stepmothers, and Filial Piety

Gan Bao’s stories all were heavily intertwined with the theme of filial piety, but one of the striking, and probably one of the strangest, tropes he uses to convey this is the filial son retrieving fish in the dead of winter. In the compilation of Gan Bao stories we read, there were three of such stories, making it all the more memorable. But why a fish of all foods? And why did it have to occur specifically during wintertime? I argue that in these three texts, namely “Wang Hsiang’s Filial Behavior Towards His Stepmother,” “Wang Yen Catches a Fish by Filial Piety,” and “Ch’u Liao’s Filial Acts Save His Mother’s Life,” the wintertime fish motif is utilized to emphasize the filial piety of the main character.

Although all of the stories have some variation, they are all centered around a similar plot in which all of the main characters were sons who were extremely filial. Interestingly enough, all of the characters in these stories express this filial piety not to their birth mothers, but to their stepmothers, who most often than not, were mean to them. For instance, in “Wang Yen Catches a Fish by Filial Piety,” his stepmother, née Pu, once commanded Wang Yen to do an impossible task. When he failed, he “. . . was beaten with a heavy rod until bloody.”^[1] The sons usually had one of two reasons to fetch a fish in the frozen wilderness—either to save their stepmother from dying of illness or because their stepmothers commanded them to. The illness-ravaged stepmother appears in “Ch’u Liao’s Filial Acts Save His Mother’s Life,” where she “suffered from a swelling ulceration” that would only improve if she ate carp.^[2] The other two stories, “Wang Hsiang’s Filial Behavior Towards His Stepmother” and “Wang Yen Catches a Fish by Filial Piety,” are where they were commanded by their mean stepmothers to retrieve the fish. Regardless of their motivations, all of the sons find themselves out in the wintry wilderness searching for fish. The conditions they describe are devastating. In “Wang Hsiang’s Filial Behavior Towards His Stepmother,” “[t]he weather was at the time extremely cold, and the water ice-covered.”^[3] “Wang Yen Catches a Fish by Filial Piety” describes the Fen river being frozen enough to stand and kowtow on. And in “Ch’u Liao’s Filial Acts Save His Mother’s Life,” the boy went out during the twelfth month in which the cold had created “a hard freeze.”^[4] Most of the time, their methods of catching fish were completely impractical. In sum, two out of the three sons stripped, two out of the three sons broke down and wept, and only one out of the three sons actually tried to break the ice.

But in the end, all three sons received fish in the same way—the fish (pair of fish in two out of the three stories) leapt out of the water on their own accord and allowed themselves to be caught. These feats weren’t just normal, they were truly extraordinary. This is portrayed in “Wang Yen Catches a Fish by Filial Piety,” where a fish “almost five feet in length leaped up and landed on the ice.”^[5] A fish merely a few inches short of the average American woman randomly landing in someone’s lap in the middle of wintertime is simply unfathomable.

If the sons barely did anything to retrieve the fish themselves, why did the fish come to them? This is especially puzzling as these events occur in the middle of winter, where the frozen-over waters would make this simply improbable. This supernatural theme is used to convey the sons’ intense filial piety. As we readers understand, and as the sons lament in their respective stories, the wintertime waters made it impossible to catch any fish. However, they all miraculously manage to overcome these dire circumstances and feed fish to their stepmothers. This supernatural feat conveys how the sons truly do the impossible for their mothers, highlighting them as icons of filial piety.

Alongside this, fish has a double meaning in Chinese language and culture. The Chinese word for fish, yu 魚, is a homophone for the Chinese word for plenty or surplus, yu 餘. This play on words correlates fish with the meaning of having plenty in Chinese culture. For instance, during Lunar New Year celebrations, many Chinese families eat fish in order to ensure surplus in the upcoming year, as expressed by the saying nian nian you yu 年年有餘 used to wish families abundance year after year. Moreover, the Confucian tenet of filial piety (xiao 孝) holds that children must provide for their parents, looking after them in their old age. As a result, being able to provide fish, or abundance, even in the most treacherous of seasons, means that these children are fulfilling their roles as filial sons.

In Gan Bao’s “Wang Hsiang’s Filial Behavior Towards His Stepmother,” “Wang Yen Catches a Fish by Filial Piety,” and “Ch’u Liao’s Filial Acts Save His Mother’s Life,” the trope of the filial son catching a fish in wintertime is employed to accentuate the filial nature of the son. The boys all managing to obtain fish for their stepmothers, even when the water froze over and the conditions were absolutely despondent, reflects well on their ability to go to great lengths to care for their elders. And in conjunction with the meaning of fish in Chinese culture, specifically obtaining fish helps prove their ability to provide plenty for their stepmothers.

Bibliography

Gan Bao 干寶, “Ch’u Liao’s Filial Acts Save His Mother’s Life” in Shoushen ji 搜神記. Translated by Kenneth J. Dewoskin and J. I. Crump. Stanford Univ Pr, 1996. 131.

Gan Bao 干寶, “Wang Hsiang’s Filial Behavior Towards His Stepmother” in Shoushen ji 搜神記. Translated by Kenneth J. Dewoskin and J. I. Crump. Stanford Univ Pr, 1996. 130.

Gan Bao 干寶, “Wang Yen Catches a Fish by Filial Piety” in Shoushen ji 搜神記. Translated by Kenneth J. Dewoskin and J. I. Crump. Stanford Univ Pr, 1996. 130.