Filial piety is China's most important moral tenet. A concept of Chinese philosophy for more than 3,000 years. Filial piety today entails a strong loyalty and deference to one's parents, to one's ancestors, by extension, to one's country and its leaders (Filial piety: an important Chinese cultural value, 2019).

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There is an old Chinese saying that of all virtues, filial piety is the first, therefore, its emphasis on the importance of filial piety (Yin 2011 and Sun 2017).

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"Confucian emphasis on obligations to patrilineal ancestors and Confucian exaltation of filial piety contributed to a moral order"(Teon, 2016) in which families were central to human identity and to a family system organized hierarchically so that men and older generations had considerable power over women and younger generations (Hwang, 1999).

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So too, Xing (2016) illustrated that Buddhists extended the practice of filial piety not only to their own parents but to all sentient beings. Buddhist filial piety was to love and respect all creatures because they might be one's past parents. Thus, the Buddhist concept of filial piety had the characteristics of universality and superiority.

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Teon (2016) stated that the concept underlying the principle of filial piety is simple. Parents give life to children, give them food and clothes, an education. For all the things that children received from parents, children have an eternal obligation towards them. They have a debt towards their parents, a debt that can never be fully repaid. The only thing that children can do in order to repay at least a small part of this debt, is to take care of their parents in their old age, to make them proud and happy, to obey and serve them. 

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At the beginning of the film, Mulan tried to be a good daughter and become a good wife to inspirit her father because that was all she can do to make her family proud and happy. When Mulan found out her father has to enlist, she made her decision and took her father’s position. One of the reasons is her father is old and his led was injured (San Souci, Tseng, and Tseng,1998); he may not survive in another wartime. As a daughter, Mulan obligates to look after her father, and she loves her father.  She went to the army even if putting herself in danger. For many Chinese, love is not expressed with words or hugs, and it is not simply a matter of feeling. What Mulan did is love to his father and family.