Ping and Punishment

My seven-year-old self remembers a book about a duck named Ping. It remembers only hazily the story. What is more vivid is a feeling of mortification stirred by the pictures of slanty-eyed boat-people. Perhaps that self made an association between the word SPANK and the humiliation endured by the little duck as it finds at last the boat full of ducky cousins that it calls home. Perhaps not. I won't ever know for certain the precise sources of my childhood embarrassment, as those distant memories must now compete with a fresh re-reading of this 1933 book.

The Story about Ping begins with the daily routine of an extended family of ducks who are set loose to forage for the day but must return to a houseboat at night. The last duck to board receives a single "spank on the back" for being tardy. One evening, to avoid certain punishment, Ping decides to hide among the reeds at the shore of the Yangtze (Yangzi) River. The young and naive Ping must then cope with trials that naturally come with being alone. Luck would have it that Ping chances, at last, upon the houseboat. This time, he willingly accepts the lash for the comforts of home.

Clearly, this book is the product of an earlier time, when physical punishment of children was altogether common and when stereotypical images of a timeless and imagined Orient were likewise accepted as the norm. I imagine that The Story about Ping was well received, as the copy I am reading bears a copyright renewal of 1961. But, when a book such as this even made an appearance in my grade school library (let alone was read aloud by the teacher), I made myself as small as possible and hoped that no one would notice me (let alone make a comparison between the slanty-eyed river family and me). Nowadays, the idyllic river scenes in the book bear little resemblance to an industrialized Yangzi river region. The very river itself is home to the world's most massive hydro-electric dam. Similarly, I think that American audiences at large have changed dramatically since the writing of this book.

Marjorie Flack and Kurt Wiese
The Story about Ping
Viking Press, 1933