The New Year’s Slap. ⚠Content Notice: The following content… | by Swallow Yan 小燕子 | Sep, 2025

⚠Content Notice: The following content involves descriptions of childhood family violence and psychological trauma. Please read with care.

I am writing this down today not to accuse, but to remind: a child’s heart is fragile, and the ways of a family can leave deep marks. If we can offer a little more understanding and tenderness, perhaps fewer children will have to grow up under the shadow of such pain.

The stories begin….

My parents were often busy with work, so I lived with my grandmother from a young age. I only had the chance to see my father during the New Year. He was a chef, home only on New Year’s Eve and the first day of the new year; by the second day, he had to return to the restaurant. For me, a six-year-old, the New Year was the most anticipated time — a time to wear beautiful new clothes and receive “Angpow”.

I remember that year, on the first morning of the New Year. Dressed in a pretty skirt with a small purse strapped across my shoulder, I followed my parents to pay New Year’s visits. An uncle was very warm and slipped an Angpow into my hand. I was overjoyed and carefully placed it into my small bag. But shortly after we got into the car, my father suddenly demanded that I hand over the Angpow I had just received.

I didn’t want to. I felt it was the uncle’s blessing to me — why did I have to give it up? So, in the car, a struggle ensued between us. My father grew increasingly impatient, his eyes flashing with anger, on the verge of hitting me in the confined space. My mother, who was driving, grew annoyed by our noise and said coldly, “Give the Angpow to your father!”

Her words felt like a final verdict. Tears welled up in my eyes, my heart full of reluctance, but in the end, I handed over the Angpow. Injustice and confusion stuck hard in my throat.

But it didn’t end there. The whole way, my father kept grumbling and arguing, pressing aggressively, insisting that I must have hidden other Anpows. I desperately denied it, but he refused to believe me.

When we finally arrived at my grandmother’s house and I stepped out of the car, before I could even react, my father snatched my little bag. Shouting as he rummaged through it, “There must be more! The Angpow just now couldn’t have been that little!” I cried, saying there wasn’t, but he wouldn’t listen.

Suddenly, a slap came down.

The world fell silent in an instant, leaving only a fiery, burning pain on my cheek and a buzzing in my ears. I reached up to touch my face; it was swollen, clearly imprinted with the marks of five fingers — like a Five-Finger Mountain pressing down on my six-year-old face. Heavy and humiliating.

My cries startled my grandmother, who rushed out to ask what had happened. My mother could only helplessly explain. She didn’t speak up for me, instead adding faintly, “If Dad wants it, you should give it to him. He is the head of the family; you have no right to keep that money.”

Those words were carved deeply into my heart.

I only understood later the kind of man my father was: old-fashioned, traditional, and extremely concerned with face. When giving out New Year Angpows, he would always secretly keep score, matching whatever amount others gave, even if it was a strain. To outsiders, he was smiling, generous, and polite; but behind closed doors, he would fret over the money spent, always feeling short-changed — other families had four or five children, so they naturally received more in return; but our family only had me.

Thus, the respectability he maintained externally ultimately transformed into pressure applied internally, borne by me alone. And after that first time, every New Year followed the same pattern. He would insist I accompany him on his visits, and every Angpow I received was taken from me in the end. The Angpow never had time to grow warm in my pocket; even that brief moment of possession felt like a distant hope. Slowly, I stopped looking forward to going out with him. What was supposed to be a celebration became a yearly ritual of dread.

Year after year, it was the same. In the eyes of others, he was a magnanimous and proper father; but in my heart, he reserved all the coldness left after his calculations entirely for me.

After that, the New Year was no longer about joy, but fear. What I feared more was the strange physical reaction that followed — almost every Lunar New Year’s Day, I would inexplicably run a high fever. It was as if my very body was resisting the arrival of that day in the most desperate way. And being sick would, in turn, bring more scolding from my mother: “Useless! All you do is cause trouble.”

It wasn’t until I was ten that I learned to refuse. I found excuses to stay at my uncle’s or grandmother’s house, unwilling to follow my parents on their New Year visits. I preferred a cold, quiet New Year to that humiliating pressure.

Miraculously, from then on, the unexplained New Year’s Day fevers vanished without any medicine.

Now, looking back, I understand that what I cared about back then was never really the Angpow itself. It was the feeling of being completely negated and ignored by the people closest to me. That slap taught me what shame was, and it forced me to learn endurance far too early.

And precisely because of that, I became even more determined: I would never treat my own children the same way. At the very least, they should not have to relive the pain I endured.

To my child, and to everyone reading these words in the darkness:

Some wounds in life stay with you for a long time, and may even be triggered again during certain holidays or moments.

But please remember — you are not that wound. You are vaster than it. That slap can swell a face and break a heart, but it can also make you understand, completely and utterly, that you deserve better treatment.

Do not be afraid to remember the hurt, nor to deny the grievance. Because every tear shed and every act of resistance is your soul whispering to itself: “I am worthy of love.”

Faulty ways of parenting can cast long shadows, but they can also give us the coordinates to reshape the future. Please believe that love can start anew, and fate can be turned around.

If you are willing, your children, your future, can all live in a gentler light.