Foot-binding in China.

 

Emperor Song Huizong.
Not 'our' emperor merely a typical
portrait of a typical Emperor of
the Song Dynasty.

I recently met someone whose great grandmother had had bound feet and I was astonished at the relatively late occurrence of something I had imagined to be firmly in the long past! Knowing nothing about foot-binding but incredulous that something so presumably painful and grotesque had been universally and historically popular in China, set me off on what could be termed, ‘a lotus hunt’. I am now more knowledgeable but equally bemused at the enduring strength of social and sexual custom and pressure.

Bound foot in beautiful shoes.

Historical records from the Song Dynasty, 960-1279 A.D. date foot-binding as beginning during the reign of Li Yu who ruled over one region of China between 961-975 A.D. Legend has it that his heart was captured by a concubine, Yao Niang, a talented dancer who bound her feet to suggest the shape of a new moon and performed a ‘lotus dance’. During subsequent dynasties, foot-binding became increasingly popular, spreading from court circles to the wealthy and was seen as a powerful status symbol. Eventually it moved from cities to the countryside where ordinary young girls also realised that binding their feet could be their passport to social mobility and increased wealth.

Zhou Guizhen at 86 [2007]
Formerly very wealthy; grindingly
poor after 1949.
Resident of Liuyicun.

A village, Liuyicun, in southern China, formerly a thriving textile town where virtually every woman had bound feet, still harbours survivors with tiny feet. The practice survived there for longer than in other regions of China because of its long-term economic prosperity which encouraged people to want wealth signifiers. In 2000 there were still 300 women with bound feet living there and one of them, Wang Lifen, 80 when she was interviewed in 2007, was typical; her mother started binding her feet when she was 7, first breaking her toes then binding them underneath the sole of the foot with bandages. After her mother died, Wang carried on breaking the arch of her own foot to force her toes and heel ever closer. The pain, which must have been intense, she now claims not to remember, but says, “Because I bound my own feet I could manipulate them more gently until the bones were broken. Young bones are soft and break more easily.” In other words, she placed primary importance on how she managed to bind her own feet, not on why. She accepted the practice as a fact of life.

Foot Emancipation Society.
Publicity 1902.

When the Manchu Dynasty began, it tried to ban the practice but there was little support and the habit continued for centuries more until foot-binding was officially banned in 1912 after the revolution which toppled the Quing dynasty. Banned but not eradicated presumably as, after the Communists came to power in 1949, again foot-binding was outlawed. The American author, William Rossi who wrote, “The Sex Life of The Foot and Shoe” in 1976, estimated nonetheless that 40% to 50% of Chinese women still had bound feet in the 19^th century but for the upper classes, the figure was almost 100%. The belief endured that women with tiny feet were a status symbol who would bring honour upon their family and clan. The first anti-foot-binding committee was formed in Shanghai by a British priest in 1874 and 60 Christian women supported him. In 1883 the Women's Christian Temperance Movement petitioned for strict prohibition, so there were early moves to consider the health and mobility of the women involved and the morality of binding feet. From 1915 Government Inspectors could levy fines on those who continued to bind their feet, but it still continued in various defiant pockets of the national community.

After the Communists came to power in 1949, foot-binding continued to be illegal and women carried on, for a while, binding their feet in secret. As Wang pointed out, “If you didn’t have tiny feet, no one worthwhile would marry you”. Indeed, her future in-laws had demanded of the matchmaker, that their son marry a woman with small feet and that was in the early twentieth century. However, Communism quickly introduced strict prohibition and also brought an entirely different life with contrary values; the centuries-old social structures collapsed and all wealth and valuable possessions were confiscated. Production methods changed; the wealthy became suddenly socially reduced and economically crippled while tiny feet meant many women struggled to cope with the practicalities of farm work and the demands of other hard manual labour which Communism enforced on both sexes.

Preparing for womanhood.

Hobbled feet had been an erogenous zone, perhaps the most forbidden of all; indeed feet 3 inches long were called Golden Lotuses and those between three and four inches, were Silver Lotuses. Pornographic books in the Quing dynasty listed 48 different ways of playing with Lotus feet with a preferred site for intercourse being the cleft between heel and ball of the foot. However the reality for women, was that, though bound feet were seen as a welcome mark of class, foot-binding deepened their subjugation, restricting their movements away from home, making them dependent on their menfolk and ensuring their chastity.

So a national foot fetish which persisted for centuries vanished overnight beneath the weight of Communism and its totally different values and practices.

Han Qinoni aged 102
of Yuxian County;
one of the last survivors.