A family affair?

A woman washes her mother's feet at an annual event promoting filial piety in Mengcheng, Anhui. Hu Weiguo / for China Daily

According to the 23-year-old, his first few years away from home were tough. He had no money to give his parents because his jobs were usually short term and he was forced to borrow money to make ends meet. "Once I had earned money in the new job, I had to pay my debts from the old one," he said.

Although he has worked for his current employer for three years, and earned a decent salary, he still doesn't wire money home. "I need to save money for my own future family," he said. "The good thing is that my parents have never put any pressure on me to send money."

Liang Dong, 32, who this year participated in a six-month training program for young migrant workers in Beijing, admitted that he has not sent money to his parents in Liupanshui, Guizhou province, since he left home 15 years ago.

"The cost of living in the rural areas is low. My parents grow food and can feed themselves. They have very few other expenses," he said.

Liang felt that he needed the money more than his parents, because life is more expensive in the city than in his hometown. Moreover, because he failed to finish high school and has no qualifications or work-related training, he is unable to land a high-income job.

Waning influence

In recent years, Liu Yanwu, an associate professor at the sociology department of Wuhan University in Hubei province, has conducted field research in rural areas. He believes the influence of filial piety has become weaker nationwide, and as a result some seniors live miserable lives. Some have even committed suicide.

When Liu stayed with a family in a village in Central China for 15 days, he was given a room in his host's well-maintained brick house, while the host's 85-year-old mother lived in a damp room of less than 10 square meters, next to a malodorous outdoor toilet and a pigpen.

The elderly woman's situation wasn't the worst Liu has encountered, though. In a rural area comprising five adjacent villages, four seniors starved to death "in recent years" because they could not get enough food from their adult child-ren.

In another village in the northern province of Shanxi, a 75-year-old woman drowned herself in a water cellar because her son refused to supply her with food when she asked.

According to Liu's research, published in 2013, the number of suicides among seniors has been rising steadily since 1980, when 60.85 out of every 100,000 rural seniors took their own lives. The number jumped to 192.70 per 100,000 in the 1990s, before soaring to 507.10 in the early years of this century.

Some seniors killed themselves because they were unable to survive on their own, or because their emotional needs could not be met. Others did so as an act of revenge on their children, who would face severe criticism for failing to care for their parents properly.

"I've been to both rich and poor rural areas. After years of economic development, most people should not have a problem providing for their parents and meeting their basic needs. These tragedies should not have happened at all. Yet incidents such as these keep happening, which indicates that the culture of filial piety is definitely waning," Liu said.