Foot binding
Photo from internet
These pictures show, in my opinion as someone born and bred in China, a ruthless phenomenon the continued for almost a thousand years - foot-binding.
01
The History
This tradition began in the year between 969-975 AD ending with the end of the Qing dynasty (1912 AD).
The origin of foot-binding is a fascinating story in itself, although bear in mind that it is only a legend.
There was once a concubine named Yao Niang, in the later part of the Southern Tang Dynasty. She was a gifted dancer, who also happened to have tiny feet (as the result of her genes, rather than being enforced upon her).
picture from internet
The emperor marvelled and raved in happiness at her 'beautiful' small feet dancing on top of his single, lotus flower-shaped stage. Hence the reason why people referred to bound feet as "three-inches of gold lotuses" or simply "lotus feet". These little disfigured feet were then placed into specially shaped "lotus shoes".
After her dance, little feet became wildly popular throughout the majority of China, spreading from the upper classes down to the poorest of people.
02
The Foot-binding Process
While Chinese males admired small feet very much and even chose their partners based on their 'beautiful feet' - with the richest men able to select the ladies with the smallest bound feet, the method of creating these little feet was anything but beautiful, in fact, it was incredibly painful.
Starting at a very young age - somewhere between four and nine years old, girls would have the arch of their foot and their toes broken by force. They'd then have their toes and heel forced closer together by bowing the arch of the foot. Afterwards, each foot was bound up in cotton bandages.
These bandages were then removed and rebound tighter once daily (or every 2 or 3 weeks for poor peasant families) with the process continuing to repeat over a period of 2 years. After this time the foot became numb and useless.
Usually, the girl's mum would not bound their own daughter's feet - they may become too sympathetic towards for their child and rebound the bandages too loose!
Young males did not need to endure this painful process because their lives mostly occurred outside of the home.
03
Why did the practice endure for so long?
The reason was that in the ‘ancient times', women were expected to depend on their husbands. A lady with bound feet was only able to hobble on her heels and was dependent on her husband's help for anything involving travelling.
As they were unable to journey far on their own, they became virtually housebound and thus very controllable; this suited the men well as they believed that a woman's place was at home with their family, as was told in Neo-Confucian teachings. Finally, many men found a woman's bounded feet to be erotic (even though they couldn't have looked attractive with the shoes off) and loved being controlling towards their women. Isn't that just ridiculous?
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