The grain shop's shopkeeper.
As Fang Yun walked outside, he asked, "Why did this happen?"
The runner followed close behind. "I don't know much, sir. I only heard that the grain shop Shopkeeper Gong manages is about to close, and he's about to lose his livelihood. But I also heard he has a bad temper and often beats his wife and son. The worst time, he broke a wooden club as thick as an arm and beat his wife unconscious. It was truly awful. They say that even when his mother was alive, people often saw injuries on her face, but she always said she'd hurt herself and never said Shopkeeper Gong had beaten her. People have always said he drove his mother to her grave."
"Ning'an County has a villain like that? Why did no one report him?" Fang Yun asked.
The runner froze for quite a while before saying, "But that's another family's private business."
Fang Yun also realized that his thinking was too far ahead of the times. During the Qin Dynasty, if parents killed their children or masters killed their slaves, the authorities would not only refuse to hear the case, but would also punish whoever reported it. By the Han Dynasty, parents could still beat their children, and if they beat them to death, the punishment was merely a fine.
For domestic violence such as a husband beating his wife, the authorities generally did not intervene. It was usually settled within the clan. Clan elders might punish the husband, with flogging being the most severe penalty. In practice, however, unless the wife held relatively high status, the elders rarely punished the husband.
Thus, the victim of domestic violence would inevitably suffer in silence, even if the husband was the one being beaten.
A family's disgrace