was going to add the other thing about Chinese culture...even with all the revolutions etc one cant just dismiss thousands of years of Confucian tradition that meant that family and ancestry and filial piety counts for much.
Even today when asians are somewhat 'westernised' the whole 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness' thing is american dream, and that is tied to independence. It is not the same as the asian dream..the asian dream would be good fortune, a long life, and prosperity (good health) and this is always in the context of family...and family being much broader than the western or american concept of family which is only really the 'nuclear family' . In asian context family is like your ENTIRE village clan.
Fu Lu Shou is one of the three chinese 'gods' if you will representing those three qualities.
notice that 'liberty' is not really a value that asians esteem. A westerner would think nothing of cutting family ties or divorce at the drop of a hat if nothing was working out. But for an asian or easterner, cutting off family would be like losing ones entire support system, name and identity.
In Maori culture for example, when you introduce yourself its an expected oratory tradition to recite your pepeha which is where you come from, what tribe you belong to, what waka or canoe your ancestors arrived in nz from, which mountain and which river you are associated with. You might be expected to recite your geneology back to five or more generations. This a totally different worldview from how a pakeha or westerner would think.
And the 'mana' or status or respect that a person has is deeply tied with how they treat their family/tribe.
I cant explain it all in just one post but its kind of difficult to explain something that is foreign to many people in a way they can understand.