PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE IMMEDIATE FAMILY ARE NOT EXPECTED TO HAVE AN OPINION IF A PARENT IS “RIGHTLY EXERCISING CORPORAL PUNISHMENT.”

established in every city. In some regions, there is also a child welfare inspector who regularly conducts visits to children who are in contact with said institutions. “But admittedly, implementation is uneven and many corporal punishment cases probably go unreported,” she says.

Personally, I was never aware that there was anyone children could turn to. On the Q&A platform Zhihu, threads from children or teenagers seeking advice on what to do about beatings from parents are often met with responses like, “Bear with it, and run when it gets too much.”

There are few studies in China on how the current generation of young adults who grew up with corporal punishment make sense of their memories. However, a study by researchers from University College London on the experiences and attitudes of 1,255 college students in Zhejiang province in 2015 showed that among the 1,014 respondents who had actual experiences of physical punishment, 763 believed it was “necessary for good discipline,” “not severely harmful,” and therefore justified.

In my own case, it was difficult to start making sense of it. Growing up, I spent more time with my mother than any other person, as my father was constantly away for work and spent very little time at home even before their divorce when I was 10. Around the age of 5 or 6, I began to think of my mother as someone who was frequently “not in a good mood.”

Her “bad moods” were quick to escalate into something physical. My earliest memory of being beaten by my mother goes back to a windy autumn afternoon. I don’t remember the cause of the beating, but we were both at home, and she sat silently on the sofa looking thoughtful for a moment before standing up, fetching her knitting needles, and calling me over. There was something that I did wrong, she pointed out, as she