Note on the Chinese Tradition of Foot Binding
Since I've been reading the book Ties that Bind, Ties that Break...I've really been interested in the ancient Chinese tradition of foot binding. I understand why the girl would want to run away from a painful process.
The practice of foot binding in China began around the end of the Tang Dynasty, or about 900 A.D. According to the popular legend, a dancing girl at the court of the Tang emperor bound her feet so that she could dance on her toes, somewhat like a ballet dancer. She was so graceful that many dancers imitated her, and the practice spread to the court ladies and other
aristocratic women.
Many historians, however, do not believe that the Tang Dynasty ladies had bound because in sculpture and paintings they are generally shown as robust, even athletic. Polo was a popular sport among high-born women of the Tang era.
It wasn't until the Song Dynasty (960-1279) that there were definite records of women's having their feet bound. At first the practice was confined to aristocratic women, but gradually it spread to other classes of society. Peasant women and those who had to do hard physical labor escaped foot binding because it would have crippled them and made it
impossible for them to move around efficiently.
In spite of the fact that foot binding was an excruciatingly painful process and rendered the victim useless as an active worker, the practice continued for more than a thousand years.
Why did women allow themselves to suffer this procedure? The reason given was that men found bound feet attractive.
Chinese women, to be sure, were not the only ones who suffered agonies to attract men. Victorian women wore corsets so tight that they swooned at the slightest excitement. African women stretched their lips as big as plates or endured female circumcision. Some American women wear four-inch-high heels that force them to totter around.
I won't go into why high heels, tiny waists, or plate-sized lips are attractive to men. My aim is to try to understand why Chinese men were so entranced by women with feet less than three inches long. Photographs of these naked, crippled feet are a sickening sight. So what was the attraction?
There are a couple of theories. One is that having crippled feet makes a woman helpless and unable to run away, and some men are excited by the thought of helpless women.
But this does not explain everything. Not all Chinese men were sadists who enjoyed the idea of women in pain and at their mercy. The other theory is that it gave a man status to be able to afford a wife who could not work. it showed he was rich enough to support a "trophy" wife.
By the early years of the twentieth century, the practice finally began to die out, although among the upper classes women with bound feet were still preferred. Even today you can find a few isolated cases in China of old women with bound feet. They are ashamed of their feet, but they cannot remove the strips of bandages and wear normal shoes because it's too painful to walk without the support of the bindings.
It wasn't until the 1930s that the practice stopped more or less completely and mothers allowed their daughters' feet to go unbound. In some isolated areas, however, the practice went on until the 1940s! I met a woman in a small village who had bound feet, and she was in her fifties.
---Lensey Namioka
(I copied it from the last two pages of my book)
DISCUSS:
-Bound feet?! Would you EVER consider such a cruel tradition?! If you didn't have bound feet you couldn't find yourself a "decent" husband.
-Other Nasty traditions amongst the world..that make you sick to your stomach?
-How's To Kill a Mockingbird going for everyone? Getting interesting yet?!
