<p>Gator, I think it’s false to see Confucian family values as a tit for tat arrangement. I put you through college, you take care of me in my old age. </p>
<p>It puts on capitalist gloss of a way of imagining family that predates Christianity. Rather it is a commitment that honors both sides in an endless cycle of love and commitment, a cycle that replicates reciprocity through generations (of ancestry). As a student in China once told me, even if her parents were bad to her, it was her honor to be good and respectful in return.</p>