 A Chinese woman with bound feet, photographed around 1900. Her Tiny Feet An Essay On Chinese Footbinding 
My feet are size 4. In our world, where the average adult woman wears a size 8, my feet are small. But in most of China from around 920 AD until the early 20th century, my little feet would have been considered unnattractive and crude. To be an object of desire to the Chinese foot fetishists, my feet would have had to be three times smaller - 3 inches long.To achive this goal, the san zun jin lian or three inch golden lotus, horrendous child torture by breaking and binding the feet was committed for at least two years. This would begin in early childhood, usually aroung the ages of 5-10 when it was generally believed that a girl was beginning to mature and develop her life force, although having the feet bound at a younger or older age was not unknown. It was best performed at a very young age because the bones of the feet still contain a lot of soft pre-bone cartilage that would be more easily moulded. If the child was too old, her feet would have to be broken before binding. The Procedure First, an auspicious day must be chosen. The Chinese had a very rich collection of superstitions, and such an important occasion as this must be given every chance to be successful. In the fictional book 'The Binding Chair', when the central character has her feet bound, her grandmother has her hold a water chestnut so her feet grow soft and a paintbrush so they are slender. I do not know how historically accurate this is, but it is an example of a possible footbinding superstition. Before wrapping, which was carried out by a female relative, carer, or professional footbinder, the child's toenails would be clipped short and the feet would be washed. Here, more superstitions were employed - peculiar concoctions including urine, ground almonds, mulberry roots, tannin, frankincense, boiled monkey bones and even still-warm animal blood were used to wash the feet with. After the feet were dried, alum, an astringent chemical, would be used like talc as a foot powder. The binding could then begin, by wrapping the foot in a strip of cloth 10 foot long and 2 inches wide. Each toe would be wrapped tightly into the sole, except the big one which was left free to point foward like a bamboo shoot. During the wrapping process, the toes and the arch of the foot may have been broken - otherwise, they may have been broken by force before binding. Even after the bones had healed, they were prone to re-breaking, especially as the foot grew in childhood and early adulthood. For two years or more, the little girl's baby feet would be bound tighter every day, twice a day in rich families. As the bandages tightened, the skin beneath them would bleed and rot, causing terrible pain. Extremes of heat and cold would intensify this pain, so hot compresses in winter and cold compresses in summer were neccesary, as well as massage to keep the blood flowing. Despite this, it was not uncommon to lose a toe or two, and even adult women with mostly healed feet had to use tiny knives to scrape away the dead flesh. It was believed that the more flesh that was lost during the binding process, the prettier the end result would be. It is said that sometimes a girl's toenails were forcibly removed, or pieces of broken glass or tile wrapped in the bindings to cause infection on purpose. I wonder how many children died of blood poisoning and gangrene because of their society's lust for small feet? Some estimates say that one girl in every ten could have been killed by the process. Throughout this torture, the girl would not be allowed to hide in bed or be carried wherever she went. She would be forced to walk on her maimed feet, not only to improve the deformation of the bones, but also because of the deformities to the rest of the leg as well. Women with bound feet were believed to have ankles so thin that they merged with the foot itself, but thighs that were broad and plump. A perfect foot would be one that was shaped like the bud of a louts flower. It would need to be full and rounded in the middle, tapering to the tiny point of the big toe. A deep fold would form between the ball of the foot and the heel, and this became admired simply in itself. The perfect fold would be tight enough and deep enough to hold a few coins.  The exposed feet of a girl who suffered footbinding. This photograph was taken in the 1900's by James Ricalton, and is now well-known. Liu-hsien's Seven Reasons In the 17th century, an author named Liu-hsien (sometimes called P’u Sung-hing), supported foot binding with these reasons: First: If a girl’s feet are not bound, people say she is not like a woman but like a man and they laugh at her, call her names, and her parents are ashamed of her. Second: Girls are like flowers, like the willow. It is very important that their feet be bound short so that they will walk beautifully, with mincing steps, swaying gracefully, thus showing they are persons of respectability. People praise them. If not bound short, they say the mother has not trained her daughter carefully. She goes from house to house with noisy steps and is called names. Therefore careful persons bind short. Third: One of good family does not wish to marry a woman with long feet. She is commiserated because her feet are not perfect. If betrothed, and the size of her feet is not discovered until after her marriage, her husband and her mother-in-law are displeased, her sisters-in-law laugh at her and she herself is sad. Fourth: The large-footed has to do rough work, does not sit in a sedan chair when she goes out, walks in the street barefooted, has no red clothes, does not eat the best food. She is wetted by the rain, tanned by the sun, blown upon by the wind. If unwilling to do all the rough work of the house, she is called gormandising and lazy. To escape all this, her parents bind her feet. Fifth: There are those with unbound feet who do no heavy work, wear gay clothing, ride in a sedan chair, call others to wait upon them. Although so fine, they are low and mean. If a girl’s feet are unbound, she cannot be distinguished from one of these. Sixth: Girls are like gold, like gems. They ought to stay in their own house. If their feet are not bound, they go here and there with unfitting associates. They have no good name. They are the defective gems that are rejected. Seventh: Parents are covetous. They think small feet are pleasing and will command a high price for a bride. - From Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio by P’u Sung-hing (commonly known as Liu-hsien) translated by Herbert A. Giles, 1880  The Manchu alternative to footbinding: the Manchu Empress Long-Yu wearing high-platformed 'flower-bowl' shoes. It's For Your Own Good: Where And Why Historically, we know that foot binding began towards the end of the T'ang Dynasty (618-906). It became common in the upper classes during the Song Dynasty (960-1297). During the next two dynasties, Ming (1368-1644) and Ching (1644-1911), foot binding became the done thing throughout mainstream China. Groups that did manage to avoid it were the Manchu (although Manchu ladies wore high-platformed shoes to mimic the appearance and gait of bound feet), the Hakka settlers, and working women in Sothern China. Less severe versions of binding were also practiced - for example, only curling the toes under the sole without folding the arch of the foot. Eventually, foot binding was prevented by law in the 1911 Revolution of Sun Yat-sen but not before over a billion women had gone through the binding process. Quite a few stories claim to explain the origins of bound feet, but none are certain to be true. The most popular tale says that the last T'ang emperor, Li-yu, had a concubine by the name of Yao-niang who had tiny feet that she would wrap in silk and dance, possibly en pointe like a ballet dancer, on a golden platform shaped like a lotus. Other women of the court copied her, hoping to have feet graceful enough to dance on a golden lotus too. Another story is that the T'ang empress had a clubfoot and the court ladies bound their feet up to copy her, maybe in a form of sympathetic magic to make them more like her. Yet one more tale tells that a fox-demon wrapped it's paws in order to impersonate the empress, although it's harder to guess why the women of the court would want their footwear choices to suggest that. However it started, foot binding had became part of Chinese life. As with most fashions, it had a lot to do with sex. The foot became a focus of erotica. A perfect specimen would meet the seven criteria of "small, slim, pointed, arched, fragrant, soft, and straight". It would look like a foot folded in half, with a deep cleft. The smallest ones would be 3 inches or less, but the average size was more likely to be 4 inches. For all the praise such a foot may have gained in a shoe, it may only have ever be unwrapped while its owner was alone - it is probable that not everyone could tolerate a disfiguring injury that may never fully heal. Unlikely though it may sound, it was said that the way a foot bound woman walked, mainly on her heels, tightened the vaginal muscles and enhanced the act of sexual intercourse. Whether this was true or not, like a modern-day foot fetishist, a Chinese man of those times could have found the withered extremity to be highly arousing, even to the exclusion of the woman attached. Some men would become aroused simply by viewing or touching a shoe intended for a bound foot. They would buy, beg, borrow, or steal those tiny shoes to admire them, drink from them, or even pleasure themselves with them. Consider the way many men and women in our world treat garments symbolizing people they find desirable - fans frame t-shirts thrown to them by rock stars at a concert and college lads go on panty raids. The attraction would have occured in many different intensities though. Most men may have simply enjoyed the aesthetics of bound feet as part of the whole look of a woman, as most modern men enjoy seeing a woman in high heels. However, some did undoubtably take it to those extremes of fetishism. A fetish for the maimed foot itself is also recorded. The very fact that it was concealed from men's eyes made it a taboo and exciting object, although a writer named Feng Xun stated that "If you remove the shoes and bindings, the aesthetic feeling will be destroyed forever." This is not a surprising opinion when we view photographs of the uncovered bound foot. It may be found equally suprising though, that some men used the fold of the foot as a sexual orifice. The custom was more than just a sexual one though. It was certain that a woman with bound feet had gone through a lot of suffering, and having gone through this, a woman was supposed to be more civilized - more disciplined and dutiful, less materialistic, and stronger than she'd be in her natural state. These concepts were seen to be very important qualities for any person to have, female or male. A saying of the times was that an ugly face is bad luck, but big feet are due to neglect. This attitude, combined with all the benefits that binding was said to have, made it necessary for a female Chinese child in footbinding areas to have bound feet. Without them, it was very hard for her to find her place in the world. People didn't like real feet on a feminine form - it may have looked as weird as breasts on a man would look to us. And like our insult of 'manboobs' for men who's chests are a little too plump, the Chinese called a foot over three inches a 'silver lotus'. A natural foot would be dubbed with the unpleasant epithet of 'iron lotus'.  A comparison of two women's feet, taken in Canton (now Guangzhou) around 1902. The Role Of Gender I have purposely avoided discussing the role of women in Chinese society and it's relation to foot binding until now, since it is a particularly deep and difficult topic. I can't possibly cover it completely here, although I'll at least try to explain it enough to help explain footbinding. I first want to dispel the myth that women with bound feet were always completely crippled and helpless. Although the deformed feet made it very hard for women to walk, and impossible for some, they certainly did not cripple everybody. You can try it for yourself - walk like a foot bound woman by putting all of your weight on your heels, without the balls of your feet or your toes touching the ground. All that would be there is a twisted lump of skin and bone, so there'd be no support except for your heels. Women with bound feet still worked. They had no choice if their families were not wealthy enough to pay servants. They still carried their children, kept their houses neat, cooked meals for their families and, especially after the Communist officials decided to order it, worked in the fields. Those who could not walk would carry out household tasks on their knees, and be carried to the fields in wheelbarrows to kneel or sit in the soil, crawling or shuffling on their bottoms to move. While researching the custom, Professor Pamela Cooper interviewed an old woman with bound feet who'd once walked ten miles to the fields, worked there all day, and then walked back. She told the professor that she could outwork any man then and any man now! While slowing a woman's activties outside the house and encouraging obedience is sure to be one reason for the continuation of footbinding, I do not believe that restraint was its only purpose. In childhood, a girl with newly-bound feet would undoubtedly be handicapped by the pain, which would force her to stay indoors and learn her duties in society. But the adult bound-foot women who are alive today are capable of living without constant attention and, more often than not, walking unaided or only needing the aid of a walking stick. In their younger days, they were likely to have been even more mobile. Remember that one of the tales related to bound feet is that it was once practiced to imitate a dancer. It wasn't even unknown for a male to have his feet bound. Boys who were to be trained as dancers or entertainers would have their feet bound, and male prostitutes would sometimes perform a belated attempt at binding their feet. This could show that the emphasis was beauty, not restraint. China was a strongly patriarchal society, and women were expected to submit to the male head of the household, be that her father, brother, husband, or son. But that was an ideal, just like size 4 feet, the size zero bodies of supermodels, or indeed, the perfect golden lotus foot. As with any ideal it had varying degrees of success. Many women, especially mothers, became matriarchs, intellectuals and political advisors. The women of the lower classes ran their households, managed businesses and worked alongside their menfolk. After the Song Dynasty, women retained ownership of their dowry and could accumulate quite a bit of money for themselves. Widows could remarry or become independent, and were highly respected if they remained loyal to the clan they married in to. Warrior women were not unknown - daughters of military families trained in martial arts, generals often chose wives who were as tough as they were, the fighting style Wing Chun was created by a nun, and Hua Mu-lan was not just a Disney character. Despite the male domination of society, some women still managed to struggle to the top. So why were baby daughters seen as such a disappointment then? A central reason was carrying on the family line. The custom in ancient China was that a woman married into her husband's family, taking their name and essentially leaving her clan and becoming part of his. If a family were to have only girl children, not only would they have no one to help with work if their daughters all married, but their lineage may be at risk of dying out. In a poor family, the expense of raising any baby was hard enough, but if it was a baby girl then the family may have thought that the expense would never be worth it. It's very sad but true that poor families with this attitude abandoned or killed their baby daughters to spare the trouble of raising them - and in some parts of the world, this practice still carries on today. Before the 20th century, to bind a girl's feet would be to ensure that she'd marry into a good family. So although it may have been a horrendous thing for a child to go through, it would also have been a kindness. Even nuns running orphanages would make sure that the girls in their care had their feet bound. We must not forget that foot binding was inflicted on girls by women - women who'd been through the same procedure themselves. It's impossible to place the blame solely on the male population.  Working women with bound feet, photographed around 1900. Bound Foot Warriors: Dog Kung Fu Gouquan or Dishuquan, called Dog Kung Fu or Dog Boxing in English, is a Chinese martial art style that is based around fighting on the ground and taking down a standing opponent. Often the fighter will be on the ground on all fours, like a dog, and many jumps land on the ground instead of standing. It is said to have been designed for women with bound feet. Legend has it that the fighting style was created by a Buddhist nun in Fujian, Sothern China, so that the disability of deformed feet would not impede self defence. When temples were being ransacked by imperial forces in the Qing Dynasty, a warrior nun named Si Yue escaped the destruction. During her travels, she fell ill and was looked after by the Chen family. In thanks, she taught the Dog Boxing techniques to their son, Biao. Gouquan was passed secretly though several generations of the Chen family before it became known to the wider public, and it is still practiced today. My Shoes Cost More Than Just My Childhood: Conspicuous Consumption 
Conspicuous consumption is the act of appearing wealthy by displaying things that are expensive. The Chinese were masters of conspicuous consumption, and it showed in all the aspects of foot binding. One cannot deny that shoes for tiny feet are lovely - when we ignore what it took to wear them. Each one is a work of art, made and embroidered by the women who would wear them. The final result of foot binding would be as varied as the women who owned them, and the shoes reflect that. Some are very short and pointed, some are longer with a little curl at the tip to hide a slightly squared specimen. Some are shallow, some are wide, some have hobnailed soles for walking and some are soft silk for bedtime. All were embroidered. Flowers were a design you could never go wrong with, but maybe the character meaning 'double happiness' would cheer you up? Some butterflies may help you walk more gracefully. If you truly have your heart set on being rich or being a mother, coins or children are never too blatant. A girl would have to sew several pairs of shoes to be part of her dowry, and at least one pair as a present for her mother-in-law. All through her life, the sewing would continue, and she'd embroider her changing wishes into the fabric using symbols. The result would be an elaborate, beautiful and expensive collection of footwear. The process of foot binding and care of the bound foot was at least as expensive as the shoes. Preparing the feet for binding would need weird ingredients such as ground almonds, frankincense, and boiled monkey bones. Then you'd need alum or talc to powder the feet, yards of cotton or silk to wrap them in, and new smaller shoes every few weeks. Poorer families would use black or navy blue cloth instead of the usual white bandages so staining from blood and pus wouldn't mean buying new material for every re-wrapping. It was also likely that the child would need medical care and medicines to deal with infection. Even after the first difficult years, bound feet needed regular care. They needed daily bathing, powdering and possibly medicating to prevent infection, perfumes to hide the smell of withered flesh, lots of cotton or silk to wrap them, and always those priceless shoes to cover them. The body of the woman herself ultimately became an item of conspicuous consumption as well. Although I have no doubt that some or even many women were able to walk and even work unaided despite bound feet, in modern terms they were disabled. Especially during the first years of the process, the care and support of other people would have been a necessity. Girls in wealthy families were often given a personal servant at the time their feet were bound. An adult footbound woman would find it much easier to work at home, which in rural families may indeed have been exploited in order to restrict women. Poor daughters could have had their feet bound so that they would learn to remain at home to perform women's tasks such as spinning and preparing food for sale. Costly to make, maintain, and clothe, my opinion is that bound feet may have been as much an exercise in conspicuous consumption as in male restraint of females. Utilitarian stands for the human body were transformed into the delicate platform of a goddess. She did not just walk, she took lotus steps on feet like new moons.  A reclining lady, probably photographed in the late 1890's or early 1900's. Foot Emancipation: Opposition And End Opposition to foot binding had always been there, it's not just a modern concept. Many mothers couldn't bear to hurt their daughters, whatever society said. Sometimes it would be left off until the child was as old as 9, and the feet had to be broken with a heavy object in order to bind them. Often, a female relation would take the forming of the child's lotuses into her own hands when a mother refused, although it's likely that some girls avoided the binding completely. In the less well-off sections of society, it was probably more common for a girl to avoid mutilation since she would be less able to work. In 1645, the emperor, a Manchu who did not find foot binding to be beautiful, managed to place a ban on it. It didn't last long though, his successor lifted it because he believed it was too much a part of culture to prevent. In 1911, it was finally outlawed for good. Championed by scholars and Western missionaries, anti-foot-binding mania swept the country. Women would be forced to unbind their feet, an act nearly as painful as binding them in the first place. Their feet were used to the support of bandages. An education campaign began to teach people that no other country bound feet, that foreigners would loose respect from the Chinese people if they continued and, in my opinion most importanly, that children would be much happier and healthier with natural feet. As foot emancipation societies spread, members pledging on entry that no child of theirs would have - or marry someone with - bound feet, 1000 years of Golden Lotuses ended. Now, it would hardly look like an article written by a stong supporter of female power if there wasn't any comments on foot binding being similar to today's custom of cramming one's feet into high-heeled and pointed shoes. But I just can't see that many similarities. Very few modern shoes can compare to the artwork and agony that is a lotus shoe. No woman today should dare claim that her heels cause her any of the suffering that bound feet would have caused. That awful, enchanting condition of something truly unhealthy concealed by beauty may never be repeated on such a huge scale as it was during the years when foot binding was the fashion. Be thankful, and never forget the generations of women who suffered.  A group of wealthy women in a Beijing courtyard. Photographed by James Ricalton in 1900, while he was in China covering the Boxer Rebellion for the American stereoview publisher Underwood & Underwood. -- Foot Binding In Old China - A superb but harrowing Flickr gallery of vintage photos. Personal website of Joseph Rupp, showcasing photography and his bound foot project from China. Marie Vento: One Thousand Years of Chinese Footbinding: Its Origins, Popularity and Demise Southern Shaolin Dog Boxing - The history of DiShu Quan. Chinese Foot Binding - Written in 1995 while the author was working on a degree in Asian Studies. Bounded Patriarchy: The Story Of Footbinding Economics and footbinding among the poor. Taipei Times: An article on footbinding and its modern survivors. - "...the process of binding a foot was agonizing -- so painful that by some estimates one girl in 10 died of shock in the first few days." Painful Memories for China's Footbinding Survivors - "Wang often baby-sits her neighbors' toddler, carrying the plump 20-pound child on her back as she goes about her daily chores. As Wang surveys her tiny shoes, cocking her head from side to side, it's clear she's proud of her little feet." Videos (YouTube) An elderly lady explains how her feet were bound. A martial artist demonstrating Gouquan. Marco Polo and bound feet, including an interview with modern bound-foot women. Books Mentioning Footbinding Snow Flower and the Secret Fan and Peony in Love by Lisa See The Binding Chair by Kathryn Harrison The Golden Lotus: The Life of a Bound-Feet Peasant Mother in the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Richard T. Li Splendid Slippers by Beverley Jackson Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China by Wang Ping Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet by Dorothy Ko -- I've been asked to provide a name to credit in formal articles! I'm so glad that people would like to use what I've written! Please credit me as Victoria Smith. My e-mail adress is victoria [a] kinunomichi [dot] info and my website is kinunomichi.info. Back to website... Victoria Smith (cc) 2010 - Some Rights Reserved |