A cloth shoe; a long wooden bench; a rock.
These are the tools of discipline Yeye wielded against Ba and his three other siblings. Yeye’s form of discipline is an alien one to most modern-day Westerners. When Ba speaks of his childhood, he talks about violent explosions. He talks about how Yeye “used shoes…to beat my [his] butt fifty times or however much which hurt over [sic] a week.” The discipline of that time was harsh and unyielding, and Ba’s childhood is littered with examples of this discipline which bordered on abuse.
When Ba was eight, Yeye made Ba crawl around the school “like a dog” for three rounds in front of all of his classmates. When Ba was ten, Yeye made Ba “kneel down in front of class [sic] and also carry my [his] bench. Everyone brings [sic] own bench [sic] and I [he] have a long bench [that] seats three people…” and he had “to kneel for half-an-hour” and “carry that bench on your [his] shoulders.” When Bo fu was twelve, Yeye asked him, my uncle, “to bite a rock…very literally bite a rock.”
I realized after a couple of Ba’s stories that there was always another punishment, another beating, another bout of violence. The list was endless. According to Ba, “Chinese think that only harsh punishment will make your kids grow.” The idea that discipline was beneficial to one’s children can be traced back to Confucian times in Chinese history. And this discipline wasn’t solely limited to one’s children, it also extended to one’s wife. China has a long and storied history of intimate partner violence.
The cause lies in the patriarchal nature of Chinese society which can be traced all the way back to 106 CE in the San Cong or “Three Obediences and Four Virtues” set forth by Ban Zhao. The three obediences are as follows: a woman is required to obey her father before marriage, obey her husband during her life, and obey her son in widowhood (Lee 47). The four virtues govern propriety and how a woman should act. The first virtue is for a woman to know that her place is one of submission and modify her behavior accordingly. The second virtue is to talk less. The third virtue is to dress in order to please the man. The last virtue involves the woman’s place in domesticity. The woman should cheerfully manage the household properly. (DASS)
Patriarchal systems are especially ingrained into the societal structure in rural areas where women are unemployed and financially dependent on their husbands. The common practice of arranged marriages and the intergenerational trauma women carry from tumultuous relationships with their mothers-in-law add additional pressure for the husband to “discipline” the wife. Husbands view it as their duty and their right to resolve domestic disputes by the means of violence, by discipline. Thus even in the modern 21st century China, intimate partner violence and family violence aren’t regarded as legislative issues but rather as private family matters (Zhao 220).
There was no help for Ba, his siblings, or his Ma. The country didn’t have the infrastructure to handle intimate partner violence and family violence cases within the city, much less in the rural areas. Divorce was highly frowned upon. If divorce wasn’t socially acceptable or even legal, what hope was there for individuals subjected to family violence?
No-fault divorce was finally permitted by the 1980 Marriage Law and the breakdown of affection or ganqing polie was sufficient reason to grant a divorce. Divorce became more normalized with the passage of this law (Zhao 222). But still, there was no protection against domestic violence. It wouldn’t be until 2016, 36 years later, that domestic violence could be cited as a reason for divorce.
In the meantime, reform was happening – albeit slowly.
In 1985, the World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the UN Decade for Women took place in Nairobi and made a lasting impression on the Chinese (United Nations). In 1986, corporal punishments in schools were outlawed. Despite this, harsh disciplining or the tradition of “dama jiaoyu” – aka, hitting and cursing education – were widespread (Tatlow). In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing was a significant turning point. The Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action were adopted by 189 countries. China was finally a major part of the global conversation regarding women’s rights and facing international pressure to shape up. For the first time, China was openly discussing issues of intimate partner violence (United Nations). That same year, the term “domestic violence” was first found in a legal document, the National Program for the Development of Women, which was issued as a regulation (Zhao 225). In 2001, Family Law was amended to ban domestic violence but the term wasn’t defined in the legislation which made it hard to use in a legal sense (Tatlow).
But the new legislation has done little to curb the violence.
In 2010, the All-China Womens’ Federation found that 53% of boys and 33% of girls were physically punished at home. In 2011, a study conducted in a county in central China found that 52% of men said they used violence against a partner while 47% of men reported they’d been beaten as children. In 2013, a national survey conducted by China Law Society found that 72% of the 3,543 people said their parents had beaten them. Another survey in Xi’an finds that 60% were hit, deprived of food, or verbally abused by parents (Tatlow).
Then in 2016, the pivotal Anti-Domestic Violence Law was passed on March 1st. The Anti-Domestic Violence Law was the country’s first law against intimate partner violence and granted protection for survivors of intimate partner violence in the form of protection orders and revocation of legal guardianship. Educational and Awareness efforts were also supposed to be made in the school and in the media. For the first time, domestic violence was defined as “when people within a family beat, tie up, abuse or limit personal freedoms, or regularly verbally abuse or terrorize, causing physical or mental harm” (Tatlow). This includes violence against children, women, men, the elderly, and the disabled. The first-ever protective order was granted on March 1 to a Beijing woman named Ms. Gu whose husband beat her for 35 years (Tatlow).
Since the passage of the law in 2016, various central-level departments in 12 provinces have issued supporting policies. Changsha was the first city to include domestic violence prevention in the assessment of state agencies in 2017 (Cai). However, a law firm has sampled 247 divorce cases involving domestic violence and has found that claims of domestic violence were upheld in only 8% of cases. The court rejected the plaintiff’s divorce request 65% of the time and the anti-domestic violence laws were cited in only one verdict. The issue lies in the extremely high burden of proof that’s placed on survivors of domestic violence. For example, one case found that the photographs submitted by the plaintiff only showed injuries and weren’t able to prove who the injured person in the picture was and was not accepted as evidence. Courts frequently referred to domestic violence in coded ways such as “one-sided assault,” “intimidation and threats,” and “mutual assault” even though the first two directly qualify as domestic violence under the 2016 definition provided by the anti-domestic violence law. A guided case was even published by the Supreme People’s Court, a nonbinding precedent, that includes a litmus test to determine if the fight was considered domestic violence, but it has frequently been disregarded by judges (Xia). Moreover, only 6000 restraining orders have been issued nationwide as of November 2021 and 10% of all domestic violence cases are estimated to be reported to the police. Many village leaders don’t understand what their duties are under the anti-domestic violence act (Cai). Protections against family violence are extremely limited under the definition of domestic violence as it doesn’t include economic or sexual violence.
It’s no wonder then that my dad felt unsafe.
Even 48 years after he was born, China is still struggling to protect its most vulnerable: women and children. And the scars of growing up this way show up in a very prominent way. History has a tendency of repeating itself; violence has a way of repeating itself. I learned from the whispered phone calls that my bo fu went on to beat his own wife, a sweet and gentle woman. Ba used to hit me on the head with his knuckles as if knocking on the front door when I got a math problem wrong. He used to berate me until I was in tears. It felt as if nothing I did would ever be right. I used to carry my car keys in my back pocket, ready to take flight at a minute’s notice. I learned how to make myself small, hide in my bedroom’s closet, and wait out the storm.
Violence is inheritable; violence can pass from father to son as it did in my family. The social and political context of Ba’s violent upbringing doesn’t excuse what he did but it explains it. Ba committed acts of violence that I can never forgive but I can begin to understand. And that understanding starts with the stories that are linked to three artifacts: a cloth shoe; a long wooden bench; a rock. And hopefully, that understanding will be enough to close the Chens’ history of violence and our shared intergenerational trauma.
Thank you for reading A Family and Country’s History Part 5 by Amanda Chen! Stay tuned for more works by Amanda in the future and read more about her here. The sixth and final part of A Family and Country’s History is scheduled to be published in the near future.