Third Prize Short Story 2005
Beaten by Grace, Singapore/California, Age 16

I never really understood the gap between American and Chinese culture until the day I went to school with my hands bright red. I was very young, and blissfully ignorant of the complications of conflicting perspectives.

"What happened?" My friends asked me.

I shrugged casually. "My dad beat me, of course."

They stopped and stared at me, mouths agape in utter surprise. I looked back at them, afraid of their strange attitudes and ready to defend myself.

“He beat you? What do you mean?"

By the time I finished describing how my father had beat me twenty five times on each palm with a bamboo stick for making careless mistakes on my addition worksheet, the shocked cry "Child abuse!" had risen.

"Maybe you should talk to someone," Amelia suggested gently. "Your parents really shouldn't beat you."

Talk to someone? I thought. Why? She makes it sound like it's a big deal to get beaten.

"Yeah, isn't it illegal?" Someone else chirped intelligently.

Illegal! The word hit my childish instincts like a brick with its gravity. If I tell someone, daddy will get put in jail! I'll never see him again!

"Umm . . . it's OK," I answer quickly. "I'm pretty much used to it."

For the first and second grades, I had studied in Singapore, where almost all children were beaten at some point or another. The dreaded bamboo stick hung menacingly on hooks behind doors in the vast majority of homes, and shiny new ones were always present at the market. Parents who did not purchase a bamboo stick used the wooden handle of a sturdy feather duster; beating was a commonly accepted form of discipline that no one in Singapore questioned. When I arrived in the United States for third grade, however, I suddenly found myself solemnly pitied by my peers, who thought of my parents as terrifying, cruel monsters.

I was caught between two poles. On one hand, I certainly never enjoyed being beaten by my parents (especially my father, who hit me harder than my mother could ever bring herself to) and my classmates' honeyed sympathy was intoxicating to delight in; but on the other hand, such talks almost always led to discussions about my parents being cold and heartless: something that I knew to be false. My parents loved me dearly, and — in the traditional Chinese perspective — discipline was simply an embodiment of their desire for me to improve. Furthermore, it hurt me to hear unpleasant remarks about them regardless of how much I hated their beatings, for in criticizing my family, my friends were also criticizing my Chinese background and the culture I had grown up with. I tried to help my Caucasian friends see that beating children was not necessarily wrong — simply a different way of thinking and living — but they never understood.

Indeed, how does one explain such a deeply rooted custom to people outside the circle? They can never grasp a Chinese view fully, and because they do not understand, they condemn. Over time, I learned to keep quiet about certain things that happened at home, telling stories only to friends of Asian backgrounds like me. This wise decision saved me much heartache.

My parents stopped beating me years and years ago; it's been so long that I don't even think of it anymore . . . and yet, every so often, the memories flood my mind, and along with the painful sensations of a stinging palm riddled by red marks comes my heart's grimace that no matter how understanding people try to be, a different culture is a gap that can never be bridged completely. Bridges can be built, certainly, but they are rickety structures; one must be careful not to test the flimsy pieces of wood too often.