Foot binding

Foot binding (simplified Chinese: 缠足; traditional Chinese: 纏足; Mandarin Pinyin: chánzú; Jyutping: gwo2 goek3; literally "bound feet" or Chinese: 縛腳; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: pa̍k-kha) was the custom of binding the feet of young girls painfully tight to prevent further growth. The practice likely originated among court dancers in the early Song dynasty, but spread to upper class families and eventually became common among all classes. The tiny narrow feet were considered beautiful and to make a woman's movements more feminine and dainty. Although reformers challenged the practice, it was not until the early 20th century that footbinding began dying out, partly from changing social conditions and partly as a result of anti-footbinding campaigns. Foot-binding resulted in lifelong disabilities for most of its subjects, and some elderly Chinese women still survive today with disabilities related to their bound feet.

History

Origins

Multiple theories attempt to explain the origin of foot binding, from the desire to emulate the naturally tiny feet of a favored concubine of a prince, to a story of an empress who had club-like feet, which became viewed as a desirable fashion. However, there is little strong textual evidence for the custom prior to the court of the Southern Tang kingdom in Nanjing (937–975), which celebrated the fame of its dancing girls, renowned for their tiny feet and beautiful bow shoes. What is clear is that foot binding was first practiced among the elite and only in the wealthiest parts of China, which suggests that binding the feet of well-born girls represented their freedom from manual labor. This implied that the future husbands of such girls could afford wives who did not need to work, who existed solely to serve their men and direct household servants while performing no labor themselves. By the 19th century, some 40–50% of Chinese women had bound feet; for upper class women, the figure was almost 100%. It is estimated that more than one billion Chinese women had their feet bound from the late 10th century to the mid-20th.

A shoe for bound feet. The ideal length for a bound foot was seven centimeters.

Bound feet was a mark of beauty that became a prerequisite for finding a husband, as well as an avenue for poorer women to marry into money. Women, their families, and their husbands took great pride in tiny feet, with the ideal length, called the “Golden Lotus”, being about 7 cm (3 inches) long. This pride was reflected in the elegantly embroidered silk slippers and wrappings girls and women wore to cover their feet. Walking on bound feet necessitated bending the knees slightly and swaying to maintain proper movement and balance, a dainty walk that was also considered sexually enticing to men.

Variation in footbinding practice

Footbinding, however, was practiced in varying forms; other non-Han ethnic groups practiced loose binding, which did not break the bones of the arch and toes but simply narrowed the foot. The Hakka, for example, did not practice foot binding at all, while it was extremely prevalent among the Hui in Gansu province. It was noticed that the Dungan people, descendants of Hui from northwestern China who fled to central Asia, also practiced foot binding up to 1948. However, in southern China, in Canton the westerner James Legge encountered a mosque which had a placard denouncing footbinding, saying Islam did not allow it since it constituted violating the creation of God.

Manchu women were forbidden to bind their feet by an edict from the Emperor after the Manchu started their rule of China in 1644. As its prevalence increased, the Manchus, wanting to emulate the particular gait that bound feet necessitated, invented their own type of shoe that caused them to walk in a similar swaying manner. These "flower bowl" shoes sat on a high platform generally made of wood, or had a small central pedestal. Bound feet became an important differentiating marker between Manchu and Han women.

A comparison between a woman with normal feet (left) and a woman with bound feet in 1902

Many women with bound feet were in fact able to walk and work in the fields, albeit with greater limitation than their nonbound counterparts. In the 19th and early 20th century, dancers with bound feet were very popular, as were circus performers who stood on prancing or running horses. Women with bound feet in one village in Yunnan Province even formed an internationally known dance troupe to perform for foreign tourists, though age has since forced the group to retire. In other areas, women in their 70s and 80s could be found working in the rice fields well into the 21st century.

The demise of footbinding

It was not until the 20th century that calls for reform by both Chinese and Western missionaries began in earnest. Educated Chinese began to realise that this aspect of their culture did not reflect well upon the progress of the modernising world; Social Darwinists argued that it weakened the nation, since enfeebled women supposedly produced weak sons; and feminists attacked the practice because it caused women to suffer. At the turn of the 20th century, well-born women such as Kwan Siew-Wah (known in the West as Brigitte Kwan), a pioneering feminist, advocated for the end of foot-binding.

There had been earlier attempts to stop the practice of foot-binding, with various emperors issuing unsuccessful edicts against it. The Empress Dowager Cixi, a Manchu, issued such an edict following the Boxer Rebellion in order to appease foreigners, but it was rescinded a short time later. In 1912, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the new Nationalist government of the Republic of China banned foot binding, though, like its predecessors, not always successfully. In Taiwan, foot-binding was banned by the Japanese administration in 1915. Additionally, some families who opposed the practice made contractual agreements with each other, promising an infant son in marriage to an infant daughter who did not have bound feet. When the Communists took power in 1949, they were able to enforce a strict prohibition on foot-binding, including in isolated areas deep in the countryside where the Nationalist prohibition had been ignored. The ban remains in effect today.

Process

A bound foot

A bandaged bound foot

The process was started before the arch of the foot had a chance to develop fully, usually between the ages of two and five. Binding usually started during the winter months since the feet were more likely to be numb, and therefore the pain would not be as extreme.

First, each foot would be soaked in a warm mixture of herbs and animal blood; this was intended to soften the foot and aid the binding. Then, the toenails were cut back as far as possible to prevent in-growth and subsequent infections, since the toes were to be pressed tightly into the sole of the foot. Cotton bandages, 3 m long and 5 cm wide (10 ft by 2 in), were prepared by soaking them in the blood and herb mixture. To enable the size of the feet to be reduced, the toes on each foot were curled under, then pressed with great force downwards and squeezed into the sole of the foot until the toes broke.

The broken toes were held tightly against the sole of the foot while the foot was then drawn down straight with the leg and the arch forcibly broken. The bandages were repeatedly wound in a figure-eight movement, starting at the inside of the foot at the instep, then carried over the toes, under the foot, and round the heel, the freshly broken toes being pressed tightly into the sole of the foot. At each pass around the foot, the binding cloth was tightened, pulling the ball of the foot and the heel together, causing the broken foot to fold at the arch, and pressing the toes underneath.

The girl's broken feet required a great deal of care and attention, and they would be unbound regularly. Each time the feet were unbound, they were washed, the toes carefully checked for injury, and the nails carefully and meticulously trimmed. When unbound, the broken feet were also kneaded to soften them and make the joints and broken bones more flexible, and were soaked in a concoction that caused any necrotic flesh to fall off.

An X-ray of a bound foot

Schema of an x-ray comparison between an unbound and bound foot

Immediately after this pedicure, the girl's broken toes were folded back under and the feet were rebound. The bindings were pulled ever tighter each time. This unbinding and rebinding ritual was repeated as often as possible (for the rich at least once daily, for poor peasants two or three times a week), with fresh bindings. It was generally an elder female member of the girl's family or a professional foot binder who carried out the initial breaking and ongoing binding of the feet. This was considered preferable to having the mother do it, as she might have been sympathetic to her daughter's pain and less willing to keep the bindings tight.

The most common problem with bound feet was infection. Despite the amount of care taken in regularly trimming the toenails, they would often in-grow, becoming infected and causing injuries to the toes. Sometimes for this reason the girl's toenails would be peeled back and removed altogether. The tightness of the binding meant that the circulation in the feet was faulty, and the circulation to the toes was almost cut off, so any injuries to the toes were unlikely to heal and were likely to gradually worsen and lead to infected toes and rotting flesh.

If the infection in the feet and toes entered the bones, it could cause them to soften, which could result in toes dropping off—though this was seen as a positive, as the feet could then be bound even more tightly. Girls whose toes were more fleshy would sometimes have shards of glass or pieces of broken tiles inserted within the binding next to her feet and between her toes to cause injury and introduce infection deliberately. Disease inevitably followed infection, meaning that death from septic shock could result from foot-binding, but a surviving girl was more at risk for medical problems as she grew older.

At the beginning of the binding, many of the foot bones would remain broken, often for years. However, as the girl grew older, the bones would begin to heal, although even after the foot bones had healed they were prone to re-breaking repeatedly, especially when the girl was in her teens and her feet were still soft. Older women were more likely to break hips and other bones in falls, since they could not balance securely on their feet, and were less able to rise to their feet from a sitting position.

Reception and appeal

A woman with her feet unwrapped

Bound feet were once considered intensely erotic in Chinese culture, and a woman with perfect lotus feet was likely to make a more prestigious marriage. Qing Dynasty sex manuals listed 48 different ways of playing with women's bound feet. Some men preferred never to see a woman's bound feet, so they were always concealed within tiny "lotus shoes" and wrappings. Feng Xun is recorded as stating, "If you remove the shoes and bindings, the aesthetic feeling will be destroyed forever"—an indication that men understood that the symbolic erotic fantasy of bound feet did not correspond to its unpleasant physical reality, which was therefore to be kept hidden.

For men, the primary erotic effect was a function of the lotus gait, the tiny steps and swaying walk of a woman whose feet had been bound. Women with such deformed feet avoided placing weight on the front of the foot and tended to walk predominantly on their heels. As a result, women who underwent foot-binding walked in a careful, cautious, and unsteady manner. The fact that the bound foot was concealed from men's eyes was sexually appealing. On the other hand, an uncovered foot would also give off a foul odor, as various saprobic microorganisms would colonize the unwashable folds.

Another attribute of a woman with bound feet was the limitations of her mobility, and therefore, her inability to take part in politics, social life and the world. Bound feet rendered women dependent on their families, particularly their men, and became an alluring symbol of chastity and male ownership, since a woman was largely restricted to her home and could not venture far without an escort or the help of watchful servants.

In literature, film, and television

The bound foot has played a prominent part in many works of literature, both Chinese and non-Chinese, modern and traditional. These depictions are sometimes based on observation or research and sometimes on rumors or supposition. This is only to be expected when a practice is so emotionally charged. Sometimes, as in the case of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth, the accounts are relatively neutral, implying a respect for Chinese culture and assuming that it is not the role of outsiders to promote reform. Sometimes the accounts seem intended to rouse like-minded Chinese and foreign opinion to abolish the custom, and sometimes the accounts imply condescension or contempt for China.

• Ju-Chen Li, Flowers in the Mirror [1] Lin Tai-yi tr. (University of California Press, 1965 ISBN 978-0-520-00747-5) Includes chapters set in the "Country of Women," where men bear children and have bound feet.
• Feng Jicai (b. 1942) (translated from the Chinese by David Wakefield), The Three-Inch Golden Lotus (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994) presents a satirical picture of the movement to abolish the practice, which is seen as part of Chinese culture.
• In the 1958 film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness Ingrid Bergman portrays British missionary to China Gladys Aylward, who is assigned as a foreigner the task by a local Mandarin to unbind the feet of young women, an unpopular order that the civil government had failed to fulfill.
• Ruthanne Lum McCunn wrote a biographical novel A Thousand Pieces of Gold (later adapted into film), about Polly Bemis, a Chinese American pioneer woman. It describes her feet being bound, and later unbound when she needed to help her family with farm labour.
• Emily Prager's short story A Visit from the Footbinder, from her collection of short stories of the same name (1982) describes the last few hours of a young Chinese girl's childhood before the professional footbinder arrives to initiate her into the adult woman's life of beauty and pain.
• Lisa Loomer's play The Waiting Room deals with themes of body modification. One of the three main characters is an 18th-century Chinese woman who arrives in a modern hospital waiting room seeking medical help for complications resulting from her bound feet.
• Lensey Namioka's novel Ties that Bind, Ties that Break follows a girl named Ailin in China who refuses to have her feet bound, which comes to affect her future.

See also

• Artificial cranial deformation
• Attraction to disability
• Body modification
• Corset
• Cosmetic surgery
• Foot Emancipation Society
• Sexual fetishism

References

Notes

•  This article incorporates text from Encyclopædia of religion and ethics, Volume 8, by James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie, Louis Herbert Gray, a publication from 1916 now in the public domain in the United States.
•  This article incorporates text from The religions of China: Confucianism and Tâoism described and compared with Christianity, by James Legge, a publication from 1880 now in the public domain in the United States.

Further reading

• Dorothy Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005.
• Dorothy Ko, Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001). Catalogue of a museum exhibit, with extensive comments.
• Dorothy Ko, "Perspectives on Foot-binding," ASIANetwork Exchange, Vol. XV, No. 3, Spring 2008 [2]. Comments on the craft of shoemaking among women.
• Eugene E.Berg, MD, Chinese Footbinding. Radiology Review – Orthopaedic Nursing 24, no. 5 (September/October) 66–67
• Fan Hong (1997) Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom. London: Frank Cass
• The Virtual Museum of The City of San Francisco, Chinese Foot Binding - Lotus Shoes’’
• Ping, Wang. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.
• Collection of bound foot shoes Article on Yang Shaorong, collector of bound foot shoes. Includes images of peasant/winter models and western-style models.