The Story About Ping question

So, I remember reading this book as a child and absolutely loving it. I remember it fondly and with great nostalgia, though I do remember rereading it as a teen and wondering if maybe it was a little outdated.

Now that I'm a librarian working with racial discrimination and literary equity issues, I read this book and cannot understand why there haven't been more challenges to it. Between the corporal punishment from Ping's "kind master" and the use of rings to restrict the fishing birds' ability to swallow, there are major animal cruelty issues.

But what really bothers me personally are the depictions of Chinese people. Stereotypically slanted eyes. Yellow skin. Pigtails and queues. Conical rice hats. I can see it has having been informed by the illustrator's time in China (only six years, note) but he was hardly Chinese and could not speak to the experiences of Chinese people.

I know the arguments that this is a good point to start important conversations, but just like The Travels of Babar and McElligot's Pool, these books need to be flagged for their racist depictions.