Jiaguo joins 家 (family, home) and 国 (country) into one idea: a household's fate is bound up with the nation's, so loving one means serving the other. The thought goes back to Confucian teaching, and today it is most often heard in jiaguo qinghuai (家国情怀), the feeling of devotion to both. Chinese reviewers use it for dramas that set private lives against a national crisis, war above all. Viewers of The Lament of Autumn read the hero's death fighting the Japanese invasion as the drama turning from romance to family and country.
Dramas
Where it comes up
The Lament of Autumn Killed Its Hero, and Viewers Say That Settled His Account
When The Lament of Autumn ended by killing its hero in a war, viewers in China and abroad described the death as the payment for his early cruelty. The loudest grief was for the husband, and the heroine is left holding it.