Bullying is hideous and damaging, but it's also a common part of life

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A man sits smoking on the floor of a school bathroom in Rui’an County in Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province. Next to him is the bloody and dying body of a 10-year-old boy. Just a few hours later that boy would die.

That was the horrendous situation that unfolded at Longshan Experimental Primary School last Friday after a father of one of the school’s students, a 36-year-old, took a fruit knife and went in search of a boy who had allegedly bullied his daughter two days prior.

Bullying is a hideous thing, no matter which way you look at it. But it didn’t have to come to this.

I was pretty much bullied all through school as a kid, and I’m not too sure why, to be completely honest. 

Maybe it was because I wasn’t particularly outspoken and didn’t exude the same tough exterior the rest of the boys did. 

I hated sport, especially rugby, which is practically a sin against the country for any New Zealand male. 

A lot of the time it was physical, like being pushed and shoved. When I was about 12 a kid in my class broke my arm. Mum rang the school and was understandably irate. The principal just said, “Tell Andy to stay away from Shane if he can.” We were in the same class. 

Shane McLeod. Saying his name here feels somehow therapeutic. I wonder where he is today. I don’t remember many other kids’ names from school, but that one seems to stick. Another time a kid — one of Shane’s friends — punched me so hard in the head that he broke one of his fingers. That was one occasion when karma came along to help me out, but usually, apart from mum’s heated phone calls to the principal, I was on my own. Well and truly on my own.

Most of the time it was verbal and mental bullying, like being called names, purposefully being left out and isolated, and that kind of thing. 

Let’s just say, school for me was really, really tough. I am infinitely envious of anyone who tells me they enjoyed it, and those who look back on their years in class with a warm, fuzzy feeling. 

The man who walked into that school in Zhejiang Province last Friday carrying a fruit knife clearly viewed bullying as the serious and damaging thing that it is. But what he obviously didn’t realize was that what he was doing would damage the lives of so many others, not least of all that young boy who lost his life at the hands of someone who was, at least momentarily, not thinking right.  

The man heard from his daughter that two days earlier a boy in class had hit her in the eye. He decided he needed to do something about it, so he did what most normal parents today would do: He vented his anger with the boy’s parents via WeChat. It wasn’t bullying, they said — their son had accidentally hit the girl. 

The man seemed hung up on this idea that somehow the incident would lead to his daughter being the victim of more bullying in the future, that somehow she had been weakened in the eyes of the rest of the class.

The boy’s parents agreed to make their son apologize to the man’s daughter in front of the entire class. They clearly hoped that might allay the man’s concerns and put things right. But it wasn’t enough, and he headed to school with a fruit knife in hand.

Now a child is dead, a father faces life behind bars, and kids whose safe space came crashing down may be, to varying degrees, scarred for life by what happened last Friday. 

I wish there was some magic pill that could somehow end all bullying in the world but, to be honest, there isn’t — power imbalances and power struggles and ups and downs are part and parcel with being human. Life is a never-ending struggle for power, where many constantly fight to gain a higher spot on the ladder, and those at the top are constantly being toppled. 

I hope this incident doesn’t lead kids to remain silent in the face of hardships, though, because one thing that no one in this world can do without — especially kids — is support and encouragement. 

I really have my fingers crossed that the kids at Longshan Experimental Primary School don’t become afraid of confiding in their parents because of what happened, and that they continue to have support when they encounter the tough times life inevitably throws at us.