the Friend/Friend principle. The old soldier had a special attachment to his newly found master because the soldier acted as three generations of the family: the grandfather, the father and the son. He maintained his role in service, but, when the time came to discuss his young master's bachelorhood, he acted like a mother who urged the son to get married. The old soldier, without any kin of his own, wanted to find a place for himself. The old soldier fixed his dreams on his young master. He wanted his master to raise a family of his own, so the soldier could also have a family that he could relate to, and thus end his years of drifting.
In traditional Chinese society, males were heads of families and the sole producers of income, and women were of no social or economic value. "For instance, in the Southeast of China, the Cantonese and Hokkiens referred to their daughters as goods on which one loses one's capital," implying that the time, money and effort invested to bring up their daughters would have been wasted once their daughters got married and left the family. Over the course of a woman's life, she had little control of the way she lived. The fate of women was in the hands of others. Their lives were governed by the social order.
Women were to be compatible with men: "A plaintive, far-off voice whispers down seventeen centuries, how sad it is to be a wom
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