Reading it now, six centuries after Guo Jujing wrote this paean to parental devotion, The 24 Paragons of Filial Piety comes off as a collection of scary bedtime stories. There is the woman who cut out her own liver to feed her sick mother, the boy who sat awake shirtless all night to draw mosquitoes away from his slumbering parents and the man who sold himself into servitude to pay for a father’s funeral.