Why Footbinding Persisted in China for a Millennium

[Randy W]

from Smithsonianmag

 

Why Footbinding Persisted in China for a Millennium

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Archaeologists discovered tiny, misshapen feet that had been wrapped in gauze and placed inside specially shaped lotus shoes. For one of my pieces on camera, I balanced a pair of embroidered doll shoes in the palm of my hand, as I talked about Lady Huang and the origins of foot-binding. When it was over, I turned to the museum curator who had given me the shoes and made some comment about the silliness of using toy shoes. This was when I was informed that I had been holding the real thing. The miniature doll shoes had in fact been worn by a human. The shock of discovery was like being doused with a bucket of freezing water.

 

Edited March 15, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Catherineli]

When I was a child, I saw many old ladies walking in such small shoes at my neighborhood. It was the tradition. The smaller a woman's feet were, the more beautiful she was. No man wanted or liked a woman with normal feet. My father's mom told me that her feet was bound very very tight and small at six years old. But she was so brave that she quietly unloosened herself behind people. Before she married my grandfather, they had not met each other. So my grandfather knew nothing of my grandma's feet. On their wedding day under her wedding veil, my grandma only saw my grandpa's big shoes walking before her while my grandpa never saw anywhere of my grandma until the bed time in their house. Grandpa was surely feeling disgraced but not for many years because Communists party came in.

Do you like to know what a doll-woman was like when she was walking in such small shoes? Walk on your heel lifting up your front part of your feet, and you'll know what a walking gesture it is and you also will know how fast she could walk. Not fast but slow!!

[warpedbored]

Interesting article. It boggles the mind that women were subjected to such pain and mutilation yet even today women are subjected to such atrocities as female circumcision, kidnapping and being sold as brides or into slavery. One of the unintended results of the one child policy in China is a shortage of brides. This has spurred a market for kidnapped brides. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2011-12/03/content_14206548.htm The Islamic State terrorists capture Kurdish women and sell them as sex slaves. Even here in America women and children are victim to human trafficking and prostitution.

 

Women have come a long way in the last few decades but still have a ways to go.

[Catherineli]

They say in China boys are more than girls. The percentage is 5:1.

[danb]

Not sure what to make of this article. Initially I thought it was somewhat enlightened and not judgmental of a faucet of an ancient Chinese cultural practice of foot-binding.

 

.......... was experienced, perpetuated and administered by women. Though utterly rejected in China now—the last shoe factory making lotus shoes closed in 1999—it survived for a thousand years in part because of women’s emotional investment in the practice. The lotus shoe is a reminder that the history of women did not follow a straight line from misery to progress, nor is it merely a scroll of patriarchy writ large. Shangguan, Li and Liang had few peers in Europe in their own time. But with the advent of foot-binding, their spiritual descendants were in the West. Meanwhile, for the next 1,000 years, Chinese women directed their energies and talents toward achieving a three-inch version of physical perfection.

 

Earlier the writer had stated that:

 

Foot-binding, which started out as a fashionable impulse, became an expression of Han identity after the Mongols invaded China in 1279. The fact that it was only performed by Chinese women turned the practice into a kind of shorthand for ethnic pride. Periodic attempts to ban it, as the Manchus tried in the 17th century, were never about foot-binding itself but what it symbolized. To the Chinese, the practice was daily proof of their cultural superiority to the uncouth barbarians who ruled them. It became, like Confucianism, another point of difference between the Han and the rest of the world.

Now I don't think that foot-binding was ever a good or healthy practice but I had thought the writer was giving the Chinese women credit for adhering to that ancient Chinese practice. After rereading the article it seems to me that the writer is critical of the Chinese women when she says:

 

But with the advent of foot-binding, their spiritual descendants were in the West. Meanwhile, for the next 1,000 years, Chinese women directed their energies and talents toward achieving a three-inch version of physical perfection.

I wonder how foot-binding is explained in Chinese schools today. Was it a kind of shorthand for ethnic pride or an frivolous act of achieving a three-inch version of physical perfection? What do you all think? Danb

 

As Carl mentioned women and their bodies even today are subject to many abuses.

[Randy W]

There is no doubt that physical torture (basically crippling the woman) for the purpose of achieving "physical perfection" is a bad thing.

 

There is no need for ambivalence on this. There is also no need to view this abandoned procedure judgmentally. It was what it was - very unfortunate, but an accepted fact of life for many women.

[True Blue]

There is no doubt that physical torture (basically crippling the woman) for the purpose of achieving "physical perfection" is a bad thing.

 

There is no need for ambivalence on this. There is also no need to view this abandoned procedure judgmentally. It was what it was - very unfortunate, but an accepted fact of life for many women.

100% Agreed. Styles come and styles go and most often comfort is ignored. Count me as one who likes the way high heels such as stilettos look on women. But after hearing my wife and several female friends describe the pain involved in wearing them, I can't imagine why any woman would want to wear high heels.

 

My wife found a pair of black wedge heel shoes (not stilettos) when she feels the need to wear a taller shoe. She says they are quite comfortable like regular flat heels shoes. They look good and were about 35 bucks (on sale, of course).

 

TB

[Doug]

I certainly would have sought after a poor girl then. ughhhh

[Randy W]

Another possible reason, from the SCMP

 

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Zhou Guizhen who is 86 years old, shows one of her bound feet where the bones in the four small toes were broken and forced underneath the foot over a period of time in China's southern Yunnan Province. Photo: AFP

All about sex: Real reason why Chinese women bound their feet ... and it wasn't for their pleasure

Early Western accounts of the alluring gait of China's bound-feet women ignored the belief underlying the practice - that it tightened the women's thigh and pelvic muscles and heightened the sexual pleasure of the men who possessed them, writes Jason Wordie

 

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Like opium dens, sedan chairs and bat-winged junks, women with bound feet were once stereotypical to China.

 

Deliberately crippled to conform to male ideals of beauty, these strange, pathetic creatures - to Western eyes - embodied the mysterious ways of the East.

 

Early travel accounts describe the “alluring” manner in which Chinese women with bound feet walked, as they gently swayed and tottered, usually with an amah on each arm for support. Physiological reasons for this “attractive” faltering gait were never seriously questioned by casual observers.

 

Read more: The last foot-bound women of Yunnan

 

Carefully sanitised by euphemistic nonsense, foot binding was considered a quaint cultural taste that no outsider could ever fathom. In reality, the underlying appeal was explicitly sexual.

 

Crippled feet required one to walk in a certain mincing manner to avoid toppling over; as a result, it was believed, the inner thigh and pelvic muscles became unusually tight. Thus, more lurid thought processes went, the smaller the bound feet, the stronger the vaginal muscles would be during lovemaking.

 

The last bound-feet women of China - in photographs

 

Adult human feet reduced to 10cm-long stumps – the fabled “golden lily feet” – were the most prized.

 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)

[Randy W]

from Humans of China on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/renzaizhongguo/posts/275941309737392

Humans of China 人在中国 added 3 new photos.

January 13 at 5:24 PM ·

 

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I don't like to talk too much about my past as it was tough and there were many sad times but, now in my old age I feel much happier. I have had the chance to travel to some other cities and now my husband and I live quite well. I am lucky that I have had the chance to grow old with him. I also have the chance to eat well, drink well, wear nice clothes, and I now feel safe. We still live together, just us 2 and this year we are both 87. He is quite healthy but he shakes a lot and can't walk very well. Our children bought him a zimmer frame and this helps keep him walking. We married at 18 and I didn't meet him until the day of the wedding. We weren't allowed to meet before. He came from another village and when he arrived he first looked at my small feet and not my face. Back then small feet were very important and the only way to be able to marry a good man. After we married I felt pretty happy with him. When I was younger I was very beautiful and my husband thought so too. The house that we live in is the house we have lived in for the last 60 years or so. After marriage, we continued our lives working as farmers and we grew lots of corn. We had 3 children 1 boy and 2 girls and things were good. We never fight and he treated our children and me very well. He was and still is very gentle and patient and still really cares about me. He had the chance to study as a young boy but I never had the opportunity, I was stuck at home. I started to bind my feet at around 8. My mum made me do it and she would help me at first. She told me when I was crying and in pain that, if I didn't have small feet, no one would want to marry me. My grandmother also agreed to make my feet small and they both have very small feet like mine today. My younger sister didn't have to bind her feet, she was lucky. There is no pain in my feet now but I remember I often cried and couldn't sleep well. I would try and avoid walking and I would crawl around on my knees instead. I think my feet are ugly. It was and still is very inconvenient. Today I still wrap them up, as if I don't I find it hard to walk. My daughter and I can still make shoes, as I can't buy shoes that fit me anymore. I am still pretty healthy. My eyes are still pretty good, unlike my ears. I can still cook and clean and take care of myselfand my husband. About 15 years ago our son took us on the train to Beijing. We visited some famous sights but didn't climb the Great Wall. We went to Tiananmen Square and lots and lots of people were looking at me and my small feet. I wasn't scared and felt quite safe, I think Beijing is a good place but now I am too old to return. We now spend our days at home with each other and we don't need too much help but sometimes we feel quite bored. I care most about my children and I want them to lead a happy and healthy life.
Inner Mongolia

 

Edited March 8, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)