Immortality in Chinese Culture

The traditional Chinese culture values eternal fame of individual and family. The Chinese society puts more weight on qualities than possessions, i.e., who a man is than what he has. This leads to a tendency of continuous and rigorous retrospective reflection for refinement in a typical Chinese.

For the educated Confucian, the perpetual sublime of ultimate pursuit in life lies in cultivating in oneself a virtuous morality. From there, the widely agreed three levels of achievements are:
- sustaining influential ideas/opinions
- acknowledged accomplishments benefiting society
- revered lifetime impeccable morality shining throughout history

If it sounds too difficult to fulfill the requirements, it is. However, Confucius and his followers have worked out a guideline as for how to perfect oneself in his relatively short life time. Such a guideline promotes and refines good deeds of Confucians, as well as stabilizes and improves society as a whole. The short version of this guideline goes in four stages:
- to enhance individual morality
- to achieve family harmony
- to conserve state order
- to clear obstacles of the world

With good chance, one is capable of finishing the first two and can make some contributions towards the third stage, or even start the fourth one. Alternatively, this guideline can be interpreted as lamentation and serve as condolence when fate is unfavorable. This is described in the Chinese saying "to relieve world when in smooth fate and to polish oneself otherwise".

In summary, immortality in Chinese culture is more about the impact one has on the real world and the status he reaches in morality, the norm that regulates and directs the society. Spiritual longevity and life in future generation, as commonly seen in other cultures, are of a secondary priority for typical Chinese.