Sometimes things just happen. Again, truth is always stranger, OK, so maybe more interesting, than fiction. What can I say? It just happened.
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Thought of you in Hong Kong.
Stopping over night briefly to join colleague prior to taking the plane to Moscow then St. Petersburg, we were having dinner with one of the Academy Directors (Chinese man, maybe 55 max.), Chinese take-out Hong Kong, in this case luxurious style in his beautiful Central Hong Kong Island Apartment overlooking the Harbour and skyline. His old Chinese maid was wandering in and out, fiddling with one thing, than another.
In the midst of this with us all talking about the trip, all of a sudden the guy's son came bounding in, slamming the front door behind him. The Dad looked perplexed when the maid started talking to him and then as the boy came nearer the dining room where we were all having dinner, they all (the maid, the boy, and his Father) started talking in Chinese (which always sounds angry, hard, and aggressively harsh to my ear).
The next think I knew the guy turned to me, switching to English, and said, "Excuse me, please."
Then the man pushed back his chair at the dining room table, started talking even more loudly with his son directly. Then the man grabbed the boy and pulled him closer, and calmly began to unbuckle his jean's belt, though the kid stamped him feet and their voices got louder for sure. Whatever they were discussing didn't seem to matter much, for the man took down the boy's jeans and then without looking at anyone other than his son, tugged down his underwear. Although the tails of the boy's shirt covered much of him, it was obvious what was happening.
That old maid appeared holding a mean looking wooden, long-handled hairbrush and sat it on the table beside the man and in front of us all. When he saw it, the boy's words got faster and louder but he kept his eyes on his Father. And then without another word from the man, although there was a constant flow of words from his then bare-bottomed boy, he just pulled the boy over his lap and took his time adjusting him there and lifting the tails of his shirt up to make his boy's small, very white bare bottom up nicely over his knees for a spanking. The boy kicked and screamed over his Dad's lap, but Dad wasn't talking. He'd clearly decided the time for talking was over. Instead he picked up the hair brush and in front of us all there at the table, including the old made standing off to the side, well, that boy was paddled with that hairbrush and I mean paddled right on the spot and hard! Lord Almighty, did that boy soon scream and yell loudly! Dad just kept it up.
When dad was done, he sent the kid to the corner where that boy remained crying and very red-assed throughout the evening, ignored by the man despite the boy's constantly whimpering and sniffling.
The man himself, when it was all over, merely handed the brush to the old maid who took it from his and disappeared and then turned back and pulled his chair back up at the table and looked at us and said, "Sorry, but I don't believe in not handling things with my son when I need to. I think you understand if you have children," he said specifically to me; and then, we went back to our discussions as if nothing had happened. The atmosphere felt real strange, but at the table we went on with it.
When we finished and left about an hour later, the boy was still standing there in that corner, though no longer whimpering.
Then, as we were leaving, going out the front door, the man said, "Thank you for coming, but if you don't mind, I need to finish paddling my son. We can socialise more another time."
The boy was still rigidly at attention. His bare bottom was very red, bruised but I had a feeling he knew it was going to get a lot redder.
As we were waiting for the lift, you could hear the lad screaming again from inside the apartment.
Later my friend who also lives in Hong Kong told me the Director knew he'd approved, as he'd been then when the boy had needed to be paddled before, and was simply assuming I wouldn't be bothered by it either. Apparently that was just the way this guy was and on occasion he'd also been known, though extremely rarely, to tan the bottom of a dancer when they got too prima donna like.
I've no idea what the boy had done. The local man there with me, though, said the boy had fallen in with too much of the "trendy hype," was getting into too much trouble recently in Hong Kong, and was doing poorly in his Upper School. The father had simply decided enough was enough and had made a decision to change his boy around before it was too late in the same way that many father do everywhere.