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{{Short description|Former Chinese custom of binding the feet of young girls}}

factoids

|picsize = 220px|t=纏足|s=缠足|p=chánzú|w=ch'an2-tsu2ch2z2}}|j=cin4-zuk1|y=chìhn-jÅ«kc4z1}}|altname=Alternative (Min) Chinese name|t2= 裹腳|s2= 裹脚|poj2=}}Foot binding (), or footbinding, was the Chinese custom of breaking and tightly binding the feet of young girls to change their shape and size. Feet altered by footbinding were known as lotus feet and the shoes made for them were known as lotus shoes. In late imperial China, bound feet were considered a status symbol and a mark of feminine beauty. However, footbinding was a painful practice that limited the mobility of women and resulted in lifelong disabilities.The prevalence and practice of footbinding varied over time and by region and social class.BOOK, Shepherd, John R., Footbinding as Fashion, 2018, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 9780295744407, The practice may have originated among court dancers during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in 10th-century China and gradually became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty. Footbinding eventually spread to lower social classes by the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Manchu emperors attempted to ban the practice in the 17th century but failed. In some areas, footbinding raised marriage prospects. It has been estimated that by the 19th century 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, rising to almost 100% in upper-class Han Chinese women.WEB, Lim, Louisa, Painful Memories for China's Footbinding Survivors,weblink Morning Edition, National Public Radio, 19 March 2007, In the late 19th century, Christian missionaries and Chinese reformers challenged the practice but it was not until the early 20th century that the practice began to die out, following the efforts of anti-footbinding campaigns. Additionally, upper-class and urban women dropped the practice of footbinding sooner than poorer rural women.BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, Women and China's Revolutions, Rowman and Littlefield, 2019, 68, By 2007, only a small handful of elderly Chinese women whose feet had been bound were still alive.

History

Origin

(File:Yaoniang binding feet.jpg|thumb|200px|alt=A black and white stylised illustration of a seated woman, one foot resting on top of her left thigh, wrapping and binding her right foot.|18th-century illustration showing Yao Niang binding her own feet)There are a number of stories about the origin of footbinding before its establishment during the Song dynasty. One of these involves the story of Pan Yunu, a favourite consort of the Southern Qi Emperor Xiao Baojuan. In the story Pan Yunu, renowned for having delicate feet, performed a dance barefoot on a floor decorated with the design of a golden lotus, after which the Emperor, expressing admiration, said that "lotus springs from her every step!" ({{transliteration|zh|bù bù shÄ“ng lián}} ), a reference to the Buddhist legend of Padmavati, under whose feet lotus springs forth. This story may have given rise to the terms 'golden lotus' or 'lotus feet' used to describe bound feet; there is no evidence, however, that Consort Pan ever bound her feet.BOOK,weblink Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet, Dorothy Ko, 32–34, University of California Press, 2002, 978-0-520-23284-6, The general view is that the practice is likely to have originated in the time of the 10th-century Emperor Li Yu of the Southern Tang, just before the Song dynasty.WEB,weblink Chinese Foot Binding, BBC,weblink 2013-11-18, dead, Li Yu created a {{convert|6|ft|m|1|order=flip|adj=mid|-tall|sp=us}} golden lotus decorated with precious stones and pearls and asked his concubine Yao Niang to bind her feet in white silk into the shape of the crescent moon and perform a dance on the points of her feet on the lotus. Yao Niang's dance was said to be so graceful that others sought to imitate her.BOOK,weblink Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet, Dorothy Ko, 42, University of California Press, 2002, 978-0-520-23284-6, The binding of feet was then replicated by other upper-class women and the practice spread.BOOK,weblink Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body, 203, Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Greenwood, 2008, 978-0-313-34145-8, Some of the earliest possible references to footbinding appear around 1100, when a couple of poems seemed to allude to the practice.WEB,weblink Han Chinese Footbinding, Textile Research Centre, Xu Ji 徐積 《詠蔡家婦》： 「但知勒四支，不知裹两足。」(translation: "knowing about arranging the four limbs, but not about binding her two feet); Su Shi 蘇軾 《菩薩蠻》：「塗香莫惜蓮承步，長愁羅襪凌波去；只見舞回風，都無行處踪。偷穿宮樣穩，並立雙趺困，纖妙說應難，須從掌上看。」BOOK,weblink The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period, Patricia Buckley Ebrey, 37–39, 9780520913486, University of California Press, 1 December 1993, Soon after 1148, in the earliest extant discourse on the practice of footbinding, scholar {{Interlanguage link|Zhang Bangji|zh|3=張邦基}} wrote that a bound foot should be arch shaped and small.BOOK,weblink Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Dorothy Ko, University of California Press, 2008, 111–115, 978-0-520-25390-2, WEB,weblink 墨庄漫录-宋-张邦基 8-卷八, 2015-02-21, 2015-02-21,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20150221045249weblink">weblink dead, He observed that "women's footbinding began in recent times; it was not mentioned in any books from previous eras."BOOK, Morris, Ian, Ian Morris (historian), Why the West Rules - For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future,weblink 2011, McClelland & Stewart, 978-1-55199-581-6, 424, In the 13th century, scholar {{Interlanguage link|Che Ruoshui|zh|3=车若水}} wrote the first known criticism of the practice: "Little girls not yet four or five years old, who have done nothing wrong, nevertheless are made to suffer unlimited pain to bind [their feet] small. I do not know what use this is."BOOK,weblink 38–40, China Chic: East Meets West, Valerie Steele, John S. Major, Yale University Press, 2000, 978-0-300-07931-9, WEB,weblink 脚气集, 车若水, Original text: 妇人纒脚不知起于何时，小儿未四五岁，无罪无辜而使之受无限之苦，纒得小来不知何用。The earliest archeological evidence for foot binding dates to the tombs of Huang Sheng, who died in 1243 at the age of 17, and Madame Zhou, who died in 1274. Each woman's remains showed feet bound with gauze strips measuring {{convert|6|ft|m|1|order=flip|abbr=on}} in length. Zhou's skeleton, particularly well preserved, showed that her feet fit into the narrow, pointed slippers that were buried with her. The style of bound feet found in Song dynasty tombs, where the big toe was bent upwards, appears to be different from the norm of later eras, and the excessive smallness of the feet—an ideal known as the 'three-inch golden lotus'—may be a later development in the 16th century.BOOK,weblink Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Dorothy Ko, University of California Press, 2008, 187–191, 978-0-520-25390-2, BOOK,weblink Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet, Dorothy Ko, University of California Press, 2002, 21–24, 978-0-520-25390-2,

Later eras

(File:Bundesarchiv Bild 116-127-075, China, Tsingtau-Chinesin.jpg|thumb|upright=0.8|left|Small bound feet were once considered beautiful while large unbound feet were judged as crude.)At the end of the Song dynasty men would drink from a special shoe the heel of which contained a small cup. During the Yuan dynasty some would also drink directly from the shoe itself. This practice was called 'toast to the golden lotus' and lasted until the late Qing dynasty.BOOK,weblink The Art of the Shoe, Marie-Josèphe Bossan, 164, Parkstone Press Ltd, 2004, 978-1-85995-803-2, The first European to mention footbinding was the Italian missionary Odoric of Pordenone in the 14th century, during the Yuan dynasty.BOOK,weblink Women and the Family in Chinese History, Patricia, Ebrey, 196, Routledge, 9781134442935, 2003-09-02, However no other foreign visitors to Yuan China mentioned the practice, including Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo (who nevertheless noted the dainty walk of Chinese women, who took very small steps), perhaps an indication that it was not a widespread or extreme practice at that time.BOOK,weblink Marco Polo's China: A Venetian in the Realm of Khubilai Khan, Stephen G., Haw, 55–56, Routledge, 9781134275427, 2006-11-22, The practice was encouraged by Mongol rulers on their Chinese subjects. The practice became increasingly common among the gentry families, later spreading to the general populace, as commoners and theatre actors alike adopted footbinding. By the Ming period the practice was no longer the preserve of the gentry and had instead become considered a status symbol.BOOK, Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation,weblink 1 February 2012, SUNY Press, 978-0-7914-8179-0, 141–, BOOK,weblink 37, China Chic: East Meets West, Valerie Steele, John S. Major, Yale University Press, 2000, 978-0-300-07931-9, BOOK, Ping Wang, Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China,weblink 2000, University of Minnesota Press, 978-0-8166-3605-1, 32–, As footbinding restricted the movement of a woman, one side effect of its rising popularity was the corresponding decline of the art of women's dance in China, and it became increasingly rare to hear about beauties and courtesans who were also great dancers after the Song era.BOOK,weblink Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China, Anders Hansson, 46, Brill, 1996, 978-9004105966, BOOK,weblink Sexual life in ancient China: A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from ca. 1500 B.C. Till 1644 A.D., 222, Robert Hans van Gulik, 1961, Brill, 9004039171, File:Chaussure chinoise Saverne 02 05 2012 1.jpg|thumb|230px|A lotus shoe for bound feet, Louise Weiss collection, Saverne ]]The Manchus issued a number of edicts to ban the practice, first in 1636 when the Manchu leader Hong Taiji declared the founding of the new Qing dynasty, then in 1638, and another in 1664 by the Kangxi Emperor. Few Han Chinese complied with the edicts, and Kangxi eventually abandoned the effort in 1668. By the 19th century, it was estimated that 40–50% of Chinese women had bound feet. Among upper class Han Chinese women, the figure was almost 100%. Bound feet became a mark of beauty and were also a prerequisite for finding a husband. They also became an avenue for poorer women to marry up in some areas, such as Sichuan.JOURNAL, Melissa J. Brown, BROWN, MELISSA J., BOSSEN, LAUREL, GATES, HILL, SATTERTHWAITE-PHILLIPS, DAMIAN, 2012, Marriage Mobility and Footbinding in Pre-1949 Rural China: A Reconsideration of Gender, Economics, and Meaning in Social Causation, The Journal of Asian Studies, 71, 4, 1035–1067, 10.1017/S0021911812001271, 23357433, 0021-9118, free, In late 19th century Guangdong it was customary to bind the feet of the eldest daughter of a lower-class family who was intended to be brought up as a lady. Her younger sisters would grow up to be bond-servants or domestic slaves and be able to work in the fields, but the eldest daughter would be assumed never to have the need to work. Women, their families and their husbands took great pride in tiny feet, with the ideal length, called the 'Golden Lotus', being about three Chinese inches () long—around {{convert|11|cm|in|abbr=on}}.BOOK, Footbinding and Women's Labor in Sichuan, Hill Gates,weblink 8, Routledge, 2014, 978-0-415-52592-3, WEB, Manning, Mary Ellen, China's "Golden Lotus Feet" - Foot-binding Practice,weblink 29 January 2012, 10 May 2007, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20130928031927weblink">weblink 28 September 2013, This pride was reflected in the elegantly embroidered silk slippers and wrappings girls and women wore to cover their feet. Handmade shoes served to exhibit the embroidery skill of the wearer as well.JOURNAL, Bossen, Laurel, Xurui, Wang, Brown, Melissa J., Gates, Hill, 2011, Feet and Fabrication: Footbinding and Early Twentieth-Century Rural Women's Labor in Shaanxi, Modern China, 37, 4, 347–383, 10.1177/0097700411403265, 23053328, 21966702, 44529240, 0097-7004, These shoes also served as support, as some women with bound feet might not have been able to walk without the support of their shoes and would have been severely limited in their mobility.JOURNAL,weblink Film Review — Footbinding: Search for the Three Inch Golden Lotus, Anthropologica, 2004, 48, 2, Laurel, Bossen, 301–303, 10.2307/25606208, 25606208, Contrary to missionary writings,BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, Gail Hershatter, 2018, Women and China's Revolutions,weblink Ebookcentral, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 66, 9781442215702, many women with bound feet were able to walk and work in the fields, albeit with greater limitations than their non-bound counterparts.In the 19th and early 20th century there were dancers with bound feet as well as circus performers who stood on prancing or running horses. Women with bound feet in one village in Yunnan Province formed a regional dance troupe to perform for tourists in the late 20th century, though age has since forced the group to retire. In other areas, women in their 70s and 80s assisted in the rice fields (albeit in a limited capacity) even into the early 21st century.

Decline

Opposition to footbinding had been raised by some Chinese writers in the 18th century. In the mid-19th century, many of the leaders of the Taiping Rebellion were men of Hakka background whose women did not bind their feet, and they outlawed footbinding in areas under their control.BOOK,weblink 27–29, The Taiping Ideology: Its Sources, Interpretations, and Influences, Vincent Yu-Chung Shih, Yu-chung Shi, University of Washington Press, 1968, 978-0-295-73957-1, BOOK,weblink For Our Daughters: How Outstanding Women Worldwide Have Balanced Home and Career, Olivia Cox-Fill, 57, Praeger Publishers, 1996, 978-0-275-95199-3, However the rebellion failed and Christian missionaries, who had provided education for girls and actively discouraged what they considered a barbaric practice that had deleterious social effect on women,BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, Women and China's Revolution, Rowman & Littlefield, 2018, 9781442215689, 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, 46, then played a part in changing elite opinion on footbinding through education, pamphleteering and lobbying of the Qing court,BOOK, The Cross-cultural Study of Women: A Comprehensive Guide, Mary I. Edwards,weblink registration, 255–256, Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 1986, 978-0-935312-02-7, placing emphasis on the fact that no other culture in the world practised the custom of footbinding.The earliest-known Western anti-footbinding society was formed in Amoy (Xiamen) in 1874. 60–70 Christian women in Xiamen attended a meeting presided over by a missionary, John MacGowan, and formed the Natural Foot Society ({{transliteration|zh|Tianzu Hui}} , literally Heavenly Foot Society).BOOK, Dorothy, Ko, Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, University of California Press, 2007, 14–17, 9780520253902,weblink JOURNAL, Whitefield, Brent, 2008, The Tian Zu Hui (Natural Foot Society): Christian Women in China and the Fight against Footbinding,weblink Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 30, 203–12,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160418235159weblink">weblink 18 April 2016, MacGowan held the view that footbinding was a serious problem that called into doubt the whole of Chinese civilization; he felt that "the nefarious civilization interferes with Divine Nature."JOURNAL, Secularizing the Pain of Footbinding in China: Missionary and Medical Stagings of the Universal Body, Angela, Zito, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 75, 1, March 2007, 1–24, 10.1093/jaarel/lfl062, 4139836, 20681094, Members of the Heavenly Foot Society vowed not to bind their daughters' feet.JOURNAL, Mackie, Gerry, 1996, Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account, American Sociological Review, 61, 6, 999–1017, 10.2307/2096305, 2096305, 0003-1224, BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, Women and China's Revolutions, 2019, Maryland, Rowman & Littlefield, 46, 978-1-4422-1569-6, In 1895, Christian women in Shanghai led by Alicia Little, also formed a Natural Foot Society.BOOK,weblink Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Dorothy Ko, University of California Press, 2008, 14–16, 978-0-520-25390-2, It was also championed by the Woman's Christian Temperance Movement founded in 1883 and advocated by missionaries including Timothy Richard, who thought that Christianity could promote equality between the sexes.BOOK, Vincent Goossaert, David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China,weblink 31 July 2012, 15 April 2011, University of Chicago Press, 978-0-226-30416-8, 70–, This missionary-led opposition had stronger impacts than earlier Han or Manchu opposition.Drucker, "The Influence of Western Women on the Anti-Footbinding Movement 1840-1911", in Historical Reflections (1981), 182. Western missionaries established the first schools for girls, and encouraged women to end the practice of footbinding.Rachel Keeling. "The Anti-Footbinding Movement, 1872-1922: A Cause for China Rather Than Chinese Women", in Social and Political Movements 1 (2008), 12. Christian missionaries did not conceal their shock and disgust either when explaining the process of footbinding to Western peers and their descriptions shocked their audience back home.{{listen| filename = Chinese Women's Feet by Scientific American - read by Availle for LibriVox's Short Nonfiction Collection Vol. 023 (2011).ogg "Chinese Women's Feet"{{pb}}Scientific American 1880{{pb}}{{small|Read by Availle for LibriVox}}}}Audio 00:04:29 (full text)}}| pos = right| type = speech70px)}}Reform-minded Chinese intellectuals began to consider footbinding to be an aspect of their culture that needed to be eliminated.BOOK, Levy, Howard S., The Lotus Lovers: The Complete History of the Curious Erotic Tradition of Foot Binding in China, 1991, Prometheus Books, New York, 322, In 1883, Kang Youwei founded the Anti-Footbinding Society near Canton to combat the practice, and anti-footbinding societies appeared across the country, with membership for the movement claimed to reach 300,000.BOOK,weblink American Doctors in Canton: Modernization in China, 1835–1935, Guangqiu Xu, Transaction Publishers, 2011, 257, 978-1-4128-1829-2, BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, 2019, Women and China's Revolutions, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 67, The anti-footbinding movement stressed pragmatic and patriotic reasons rather than feminist ones, arguing that abolition of footbinding would lead to better health and more efficient labour. Kang Youwei submitted a petition to the throne commenting on the fact that China had become a joke to foreigners and that "footbinding was the primary object of such ridicule."Keeling. "The Anti-Footbinding Movement, 1872-1922: A Cause for China Rather Than Chinese Women", in Social and Political Movements 1 (2008), 14.Reformers such as Liang Qichao, influenced by Social Darwinism, also argued that it weakened the nation, since enfeebled women supposedly produced weak sons.BOOK,weblink The Chinese Medical Ministries of Kang Cheng and Shi Meiyu, 1872–1937, Connie A. Shemo, 51, Lehigh University Press, 2011, 978-1-61146-086-5, In his "On Women's Education", Liang Qichao asserts that the root cause of national weakness inevitably lies the lack of education for women. Qichao connected education for women and footbinding: "As long as foot binding remains in practice, women's education can never flourish."Liang Qichao. "On Women's Education", in The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory, by Lydia He Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (Columbia University Press, 2013), 202. Qichao was also disappointed that foreigners had opened the first schools as he thought that the Chinese should be teaching Chinese women. At the turn of the 20th century, early feminists, such as Qiu Jin, called for the end of footbinding.BOOK,weblink Chinese Women in Christian Ministry, Mary Keng Mun Chung, Peter Lang, 1 May 2005, 978-0-8204-5198-5, WEB,weblink 1907: Qiu Jin, Chinese feminist and revolutionary, July 15, 2011, ExecutedToday.com, In 1906, Zhao Zhiqian wrote in Beijing Women's News to blame women with bound feet for being a national weakness in the eyes of other nations.BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, Women and China's Revolution, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 978-1-4422-1570-2, Lanham, MD, 67–68, Many members of anti-footbinding groups pledged to not bind their daughters' feet nor to allow their sons to marry women with bound feet.NEWS,weblink The Art of Social Change: Campaigns against foot-binding and genital mutilation, Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 2010-10-22, The New York Times, 2017-09-03, 0362-4331, In 1902, Empress Dowager Cixi issued an anti-footbinding edict, but it was soon rescinded.{{Citation needed|date=May 2022}}In 1912 the new Republic of China government banned footbinding, though the ban was not actively implemented, and leading intellectuals of the May Fourth Movement saw footbinding as a major symbol of China's backwardness.BOOK,weblink Science and Football III, Thomas, Reilly, Jens, Bangsbo, A. Mark, Williams, Wang Ke-wen, Taylor & Francis, 1996, 8, 978-0-419-22160-9, Provincial leaders, such as Yan Xishan in Shanxi, engaged in their own sustained campaign against footbinding with foot inspectors and fines for those who continued the practice,BOOK,weblink Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Dorothy, Ko, University of California Press, 2008, 50–63, 978-0-520-25390-2, while regional governments of the later Nanjing regime also enforced the ban. The campaign against footbinding was successful in some regions. In one province, a 1929 survey showed that, while only 2.3% of girls born before 1910 had unbound feet, 95% of those born after were not bound.BOOK,weblink Ordinary Violence: Everyday Assaults against Women Worldwide, Mary White Stewart, 4237–428, Praeger, 27 January 2014, 978-1-4408-2937-6, In a region south of Beijing, Dingxian, where over 99% of women once had bound feet, no new cases were found among those born after 1919.BOOK,weblink Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, Margaret E., Keck, Kathryn, Sikkink, 64–65, Cornell University Press, 1998, 978-0-8014-8456-8, JOURNAL, 2770363, The Disappearance of Foot-Binding in Tinghsien, Sidney D., Gamble, American Journal of Sociology, 49, 2, September 1943, 181–183, 10.1086/219351, 72732576, In Taiwan, the practice was also discouraged by the ruling Japanese from the beginning of Japanese rule, and from 1911 to 1915 it was gradually made illegal.Hu, Alex. "The Influence of Western Women on the Anti-Footbinding Movement". Historical Reflections, Vol. 8, No. 3, Women in China: Current Directions in Historical Scholarship, Fall 1981, pp. 179–199. "Besides improvements in civil engineering, progress was made in social areas as well. The traditional Chinese practice of foot binding was widespread in Taiwan's early years. Traditional Chinese society perceived women with smaller feet as being more beautiful. Women would bind their feet with long bandages to stunt growth; housemaids were divided into those with bound feet and those without. The former served the daughters of the house, while the latter were assigned heavier work. This practice was later regarded as barbaric. In the early years of the Japanese colonial period, the Foot-binding Liberation Society was established to promote the idea of natural feet, but its influence was limited. The fact that women suffered higher casualties in the 1906 Meishan quake with 551 men and 700 women dead and 1,099 men and 1,334 women injured—very different from the situation in Japan—raised public concern. Foot binding was blamed and this gave impetus to the drive to stamp out the practice." The practice lingered on in some regions in China. In 1928, a census in rural Shanxi found that 18% of women had bound feet,WEB,weblink Bound by History: The Last of China's 'Lotus-Feet' Ladies, Simon Montlake, November 13, 2009, Wall Street Journal, while in some remote rural areas, such as Yunnan Province, it continued to be practised until the 1950s.Favazza, Armando R. (2011), Bodies under Siege: Self-mutilation, Nonsuicidal Self-injury, and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry, p. 118.Gillet, Kit (16 April 2012). "In China, foot binding slowly slips into history". The Los Angeles Times. In most parts of China the practice had virtually disappeared by 1949. The practice was also stigmatized in Communist China, and the last vestiges of footbinding were stamped out, with the last new case of footbinding reported in 1957.Li Xiu-ying. "Women with Bound Feet in China: Cessation of Bound Feet during the Communist Era". University of Virginia. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200731081735weblink|date=2020-07-31}}. Excerpts from When I was a girl in China, stories collected by Joseph Rupp.Ko, Alice (2007). Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. University of California Press. {{ISBN|978-0520253902}}. "The last case of girls binding ever occurred in 1957." By the 21st century, only a few elderly women in China still had bound feet.NEWS,weblink Unbound: China's last 'lotus feet' – in pictures, 15 June 2015, The Guardian, WEB,weblink Traveling Across China to Tell the Story of a Generation of Women With Bound Feet, May 21, 2015, David, Rosenberg, Slate, In 1999, the last shoe factory making lotus shoes, the Zhiqian Shoe Factory in Harbin, closed.BOOK,weblink Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Dorothy, Ko, University of California Press, 2008, 9, 978-0-520-25390-2,

Practice

Variations and prevalence

(File:Natural vs. bound feet comparison, 1902.JPG|thumb|left|A comparison between a woman with un-bound feet (left) and a woman with bound feet in 1902)Footbinding was practised in various forms and its prevalence varied in different regions. A less severe form in Sichuan, called "cucumber foot" ({{transliteration|zh|huángguā jiǎo}} ) due to its slender shape, folded the four toes under but did not distort the heel or taper the ankle.BOOK, Footbinding and Women's Labor in Sichuan, Hill Gates,weblink 7, Routledge, 2014, 978-0-415-52592-3, Some working women in Jiangsu made a pretence of binding while keeping their feet natural.BOOK,weblink The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History, C. Fred, Blake, 327–329, Bonnie G. Smith, Oxford University Press USA, 2008, 978-0-19-514890-9, Not all women were always bound—some women once bound remained bound throughout their lives, some were only briefly bound and some were bound only until marriage.BOOK, Footbinding and Women's Labor in Sichuan, Hill Gates,weblink 20, Routledge, 2014, 978-0-415-52592-3, Footbinding was most common among women whose work involved domestic crafts and those in urban areas; it was also more common in northern China, where it was widely practised by women of all social classes, but less so in parts of southern China such as Guangdong and Guangxi, where it was largely a practice of women in the provincial capitals or among the gentry.BOOK,weblink World History, William Duiker, Jackson Spielvoge, Wadsworth, 7th Revised, 282, 2012, 978-1-111-83165-3, BOOK,weblink Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Dorothy Ko, University of California Press, 2008, 111–115, 978-0-520-21884-0, Feet were bound to their smallest in the northern provinces of Hebei, Shandong, Shanxi and Shaanxi, but the binding was less extreme and less common in the southern provinces of Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan and Guizhou, where not all daughters of the wealthy had bound feet.BOOK, Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Dorothy, Ko, University of California Press, 2008, 139, 978-0-520-21884-0, Footbinding limited the mobility of girls, so they became engaged in handwork from childhood. It is thought that the necessity for female labour in the fields owing to a longer growing season in the South and the impracticability of bound feet working in wet rice fields limited the spread of the practice in the countryside of the South.BOOK,weblink Footbinding as Fashion: Ethnicity, Labor, and Status in Traditional China, John Robert, Shepherd, 100, University of Washington Press, 2019, 978-0295744414, However some farming women bound their daughter's feet, but "the process began later than in elite families, and feet were bound more loosely among the poor."BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, Women and China's Revolutions, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 978-1-4422-1568-9, Maryland, 15, (File:Shoes for a Manchu noblewoman, China, Qing dynasty, mid 1800s AD, silk, wood - Textile Museum, George Washington University - DSC09970.JPG|thumb|upright=0.9|The Manchu "flower bowl" shoes designed to imitate bound feet, mid-1880s)Manchu women, as well as Mongol and Chinese women in the Eight Banners, did not bind their feet. The most a Manchu woman might do was to wrap the feet tightly to give them a slender appearance.BOOK,weblink Elliott, Mark C., The Manchu Way: the Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China, 2001, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 978-0-8047-3606-0, 246–249, The Manchus, wanting to emulate the particular gait that bound feet necessitated, adapted their own form of platform shoes to cause them to walk in a similar swaying manner. These Manchu platform shoes were known as "flower bowl" shoes () or "horse-hoof" shoes (); they have a platform generally made of wood {{convert|2|–|6|in|cm|sp=us|order=flip|sigfig=1|abbr=on}} in height and fitted to the middle of the sole, or they have a small central tapered pedestal. Many Han Chinese in the Inner City of Beijing did not bind their feet either, and it was reported in the mid-1800s that around 50–60% of non-banner women had unbound feet. Han immigrant women to the Northeast came under Manchu influence and abandoned footbinding.BOOK, Shepherd, John, Footbinding as Fashion, 2018, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 144–163, Bound feet nevertheless became a significant differentiating marker between Han women and Manchu or other banner women.The Hakka people were unusual among Han Chinese in not practising footbinding.Lawrence Davis, Edward (2005). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture, Routledge, p. 333.BOOK, Shepherd, John R., Footbinding as Fashion, 2018, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 43–44, 89–95, Most non-Han Chinese people, such as the Manchus, Mongols and Tibetans, did not bind their feet. Some non-Han ethnic groups did. Footbinding was practised by the Hui Muslims in Gansu Province.BOOK,weblink Encyclopædia of religion and ethics, 8, James, Hastings, John Alexander, Selbie, Louis Herbert, Gray, 1916, T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 893, 9780567065094, January 1, 2011, Original from Harvard University The Dungan Muslims, descendants of Hui from northwestern China who fled to central Asia, were also practising footbinding up to 1948.BOOK, Touraj Atabaki, Sanjyot Mehendale, Sanjyot Mehendale, Central Asia and the Caucasus: transnationalism and diaspora,weblink January 1, 2011, 2005, Psychology Press, 978-0-415-33260-6, 31, In southern China, in Canton (Guangzhou), 19th-century Scottish scholar James Legge noted a mosque that had a placard denouncing footbinding, saying Islam did not allow it since it constituted violating the creation of God.BOOK,weblink mohammedan., The religions of China: Confucianism and Tâoism described and compared with Christianity, James Legge, 1880, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 111, June 28, 2010, (Original from Harvard University)

Process

{{multiple image| align = right| image1 = GebundenerFuss.jpg| width1 = {{#expr: (200 * 364 / 448) round 0}}| alt1 = A bound foot| caption1 = A bound foot| image2 = GebundenFuss.jpg| width2 = {{#expr: (200 * 432 / 462) round 0}}| alt2 = A bandaged bound foot| caption2 = 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 four and nine. Binding usually started during the winter months since the feet were more likely to be numb and the pain would not be as extreme.BOOK, Jackson, Beverley, Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years of an Erotic Tradition, Ten Speed Press, 1997, 978-0-89815-957-8, 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, {{convert|3|m|ft|0|abbr=on}} long and {{convert|5|cm|in|frac=2|abbr=on}} wide, 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 drawn down straight with the leg and the arch of the foot 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 around the heel, the 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, pressing the toes beneath the sole. The binding was pulled so tightly that the girl could not move her toes at all and the ends of the binding cloth were then sewn so that the girl could not loosen it.(File:Bound feet (X-ray).jpg|thumb|An X-ray of two bound feet)(File:FootBindingRxSchema2.gif|thumb|Schema of an X-ray comparison between an unbound and bound foot)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 checked for injury, and the nails trimmed. When unbound, the broken feet were also kneaded to soften them and the soles of the girl's feet were often beaten to make the joints and broken bones more flexible. The feet were also soaked in a concoction that caused necrotic flesh to fall off.Immediately after this procedure, the girl's broken toes were folded back under and the feet were rebound. The bindings were pulled even tighter each time the girl's feet were rebound. 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 footbinder who carried out the initial breaking and ongoing binding of the feet. It was considered preferable to have someone other than the mother do it, as she might have been sympathetic to her daughter's pain and less willing to keep the bindings tight.Once a girl's foot had been crushed and bound, attempting to reverse the process by unbinding was painful,BOOK,weblink Encyclopedia of Body Adornment, Margo DeMello, 116–117, Greenwood Press, 2007, 978-0-313-33695-9, and the shape could not be reversed without a woman undergoing the same pain again. The timing and degree of footbinding varied among communities.BOOK, Shepherd, John R., Footbinding as Fashion, 2018, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 78–83,

Health problems

(File:Feet of a Chinese woman, showing the effect of foot-binding.jpg|alt=feet of a Chinese woman in an isolation hospital in Mauritius|thumb|Feet of a Chinese woman, showing the effect of foot-binding)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 injuries to the toes were unlikely to heal and were likely to gradually worsen and lead to infected toes and rotting flesh. The necrosis of the flesh would initially give off a foul odour. Later the smell may have come from various microorganisms that colonized the folds.WEB,weblink The ties that bind, Fraser, Newham, 21 March 2005, The Guardian, Most of the women receiving treatment did not go out often and were disabled.If the infection in the feet and toes entered the bones, it could cause them to soften, which could result in toes dropping off. This was seen as a benefit because 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 footbinding, and a surviving girl was more at risk of medical problems as she grew older. It is thought that as many as 10% of girls may have died from gangrene and other infections owing to footbinding.BOOK,weblink Ordinary Violence: Everyday Assaults against Women Worldwide, Mary White, Stewart, 423, Praeger, 27 January 2014, 978-1-4408-2937-6, 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. Even after the foot bones had healed, they were prone to rebreaking repeatedly, especially when the girl was in her teenage years and her feet were still soft. Bones in the girls' feet would often be deliberately broken again to further change the size or shape of the feet. This was especially the case with the girl's toes, which were broken several times since small toes were especially desirable.JOURNAL, Cummings, S. R., Ling, X., Stone, K., Consequences of foot binding among older women in Beijing, China, American Journal of Public Health, 1997, 87, 10, 1677–1679, 10.2105/AJPH.87.10.1677, 9357353, 1381134, Older women were more likely to break hips and other bones in falls, since they could not balance properly on their feet, and were less able to rise to their feet from a sitting position.Cummings, S. & Stone, K. (1997) "Consequences of Foot Binding Among Older Women in Beijing China", in: American Journal of Public Health EBSCO Host. October 1997 Other issues that may have arisen from footbinding included paralysis and muscular atrophy. By the turn of the century footbinding had been exposed in photographs, X-rays and detailed textual descriptions. These scientific investigations detailed how footbinding deformed the leg, covered the skin with cracks and sores and altered the posture.BOOK, Hershatter, Gail,weblink Rowman & Littlefield, Women and China's revolutions, 2019, 978-1-4422-1569-6, Lanham, Maryland, 1047569427,

Views and interpretations

There are many interpretations to the practice of footbinding. The interpretive models used include fashion (with the Chinese customs somewhat comparable to the more extreme examples of Western women's fashion such as corsetry), seclusion (sometimes evaluated as morally superior to the gender mingling in the West), perversion (the practice imposed by men with sexual perversions), inexplicable deformation, child abuse and extreme cultural traditionalism. In the late 20th century some feminists introduced positive overtones, reporting that it gave some women a sense of mastery over their bodies and pride in their beauty.Patricia Buckley Ebrey, "Gender and Sinology: Shifting Western Interpretations of Foot binding, 1300-1890", Late Imperial China (1999) 20#2 pp 1-34.

Beauty and erotic appeal

(File:Woman with bound feet reclining on chaise lounge, China LCCN2001705601.jpg|thumb|240px|left|Bound feet were considered beautiful and even erotic.)Before footbinding was practised in China, admiration for small feet already existed as demonstrated by the Tang dynasty tale of Ye Xian written around 850 by Duan Chengshi. This tale of a girl who lost her shoe and then married a king who sought the owner of the shoe as only her foot was small enough to fit the shoe contains elements of the European story of Cinderella and is thought to be one of its antecedents.BOOK,weblink Footbinding: A Jungian Engagement with Chinese Culture and Psychology, Shirley See Yan Ma, 75–78, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 4 December 2009, 9781135190071, JOURNAL,weblink Asian Origins of Cinderella: The Zhuang Storyteller of Guangxi, Oral Tradition, 25, 2, Fay, Beauchamp, 447–496, 2017-07-25, 2017-12-15,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20171215135835weblink">weblink dead, For many, the bound feet were an enhancement to a woman's beauty and made her movement more dainty,BOOK, Ebrey, Patricia Buckley,weblink 'Cambridge Illustrated History of China, 2010, Cambridge University Press, New York, 160–161, 2nd, 9780521124331, and a woman with perfect lotus feet was likely to make a more prestigious marriage.BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, 2019, Women and China's Revolutions, The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 47, 978-1-4422-1568-9, BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, Women and China's Revolutions, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 9781442215696, Lanham, MD, 45, Even while not much was written on the subject of footbinding prior to the latter half of the 19th century, the writings that were done on this topic, particularly by educated men, frequently alluded to the erotic nature and appeal of bound feet in their poetry.BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, Women and China's Revolutions, Rowman & Littlefield, 2019, 978-1-4422-1568-9, 45, The desirability varies with the size of the feet—the perfect bound feet and the most desirable (called {{gloss|golden lotuses}}) would be around 3 Chinese inches (around {{cvt|4|in|cm|order=flip|sigfig=1|disp=or}}) or smaller, while those larger were called {{gloss|silver lotuses}} (4 Chinese inches—around {{cvt|13|cm|in|sigfig=2|disp=or}}) or {{gloss|iron lotuses}} (5 Chinese inches—around {{cvt|17|cm|in|sigfig=2|disp=or}}—or larger, and thus the least desirable for marriage).BOOK,weblink The Aesthetics of Dress, Ian, King, 59, 9783319543222, Springer, 31 March 2017, Therefore people had greater expectations for footbinding brides.JOURNAL, Brown, Melissa J., Feldman, Marcus W., Ehrlich, Paul R., 2009, Sociocultural Epistasis and Cultural Exaptation in Footbinding, Marriage Form, and Religious Practices in Early 20th-Century Taiwan, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106, 52, 22139–22144, 10.1073/pnas.0907520106, 40536412, 20080786, 0027-8424, 2796906, 2009PNAS..10622139B, free, The belief that footbinding made women more desirable to men is widely used as an explanation for the spread and persistence of footbinding.BOOK,weblink Footbinding and Women's Labor in Sichuan, Hill Gates, 56, Routledge, 2014, 978-0-415-52592-3, Some also considered bound feet to be intensely erotic. Some men preferred never to see a woman's bound feet, so they were always concealed within tiny 'lotus shoes' and wrappings. According to Robert van Gulik, the bound feet were also considered the most intimate part of a woman's body. In erotic art of the Qing period where the genitalia may be shown, the bound feet were never depicted uncovered.BOOK,weblink Sexual life in ancient China:A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from Ca. 1500 B.C. Till 1644 A.D, 218, Robert Hans van Gulik, 1961, Brill, 9004039171, Howard Levy, however, suggests that the barely revealed bound foot may also only function as an initial tease.An effect of the bound feet was 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. Walking on bound feet necessitated bending the knees slightly and swaying to maintain proper movement and balance, a dainty walk that was also considered to be erotically attractive to some men.BOOK, Sexuality Now: Embracing Diversity, Janell L. Carroll,weblink 8, Cengage Learning, 2009, 978-0-495-60499-0, Some men found the smell of the bound feet attractive and some also apparently believed that bound feet would cause layers of folds to develop in the vagina, and that the thighs would become sensuously heavier and the vagina tighter.BOOK,weblink Bodies under Siege: Self-mutilation, Nonsuicidal Self-injury, and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry, Armando R. Favazza, 117, Johns Hopkins University Press, third, 2 May 2011, 9781421401119, The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud considered footbinding to be a "perversion that corresponds to foot fetishism",BOOK, Hacker, Authur, China Illustrated, 2012, Turtle Publishing, 9781462906901,weblink and that it appeased male castration anxiety.BOOK, Hershatter, Gail, September 4, 2018, Women and China's Revolutions,weblink Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 10, 9781442215689, It was simply what a loving mother did to prepare her daughter to make a good marriage into a respectable family. Not to bind would be a failure of maternal duty." While the social implications of footbinding may have included a sexual element, mothers who were binding their daughter’s feet were not considering these implications. They were performing this exceptionally painful act out of love for their child, in order to secure what they believed would be a better future for her.,

Role of Confucianism

(File:A HIGH CASTE LADYS DAINTY LILY FEET.jpg|thumb|220px|A woman with her feet unwrapped)In the Song dynasty the status of women declined and a common argument is that the decline was the result of the revival of Confucianism as neo-Confucianism and that, in addition to promoting the seclusion of women and the cult of widow chastity, it also contributed to the development of footbinding. According to Robert van Gulik, the prominent Song Confucian scholar Zhu Xi stressed the inferiority of women as well as the need to keep men and women strictly separate.BOOK,weblink Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China, Anders Hansson, 46, Brill, 1996, 978-9004105966, It was claimed by Lin Yutang among others, probably based on an oral tradition, that Zhu Xi also promoted footbinding in Fujian as a way of encouraging chastity among women; that by restricting their movement, it would help keep men and women separate.BOOK,weblink Women and the Family in Chinese History, Patricia Buckley Ebrey, 10–12, Routledge, 19 September 2002, 978-0415288224, However, historian Patricia Ebrey suggests that this story might be fictitious,BOOK,weblink Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation, Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, April 2006, 978-0-7914-6749-7, 139, and argued that the practice arose so as to emphasize the gender distinction during a period of societal change in the Song dynasty.JOURNAL, Why Chinese Neo-Confucian Women Made a Fetish of Small Feet, Aubrey L., McMahan, Grand Valley Journal of History, 2, 1 Article 3, 10.1.1.648.2278, Some Confucian moralists in fact disapproved of the erotic associations of footbinding, and unbound women were also praised.BOOK, Bonnie G. Smith, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History: 4 Volume Set,weblink 2008, Oxford University Press, USA, 978-0-19-514890-9, 358–, The Neo-Confucian Cheng Yi was said to be against footbinding and his family and descendants did not bind their feet.BOOK, 丁传靖 ç¼–, 《宋人轶事汇编》, 北京, 中华书局, 1981, 卷9，第2册，页455, WEB,weblink Foot-binding and Ruism (Confucianism), 16 March 2017, Bin Song, Huffington Post, Modern Confucian scholars such as Tu Weiming also dispute any causal link between neo-Confucianism and footbinding.BOOK, Confucian thought: selfhood as creative transformation, Tu Wei-ming, State University of New York Press, 1985, It has been noted that Confucian doctrine in fact prohibits mutilation of the body as people should not "injure even the hair and skin of the body received from mother and father". It is argued that such injunction applies less to women, rather it is meant to emphasize the sacred link between sons and their parents. Furthermore, it is argued that Confucianism institutionalized the family system in which women are called upon to sacrifice themselves for the good of the family, a system that fostered such practice.Historian Dorothy Ko proposed that footbinding may be an expression of the Confucian ideals of civility and culture in the form of correct attire or bodily adornment, and that footbinding was seen as a necessary part of being feminine as well as being civilized. Footbinding was often classified in Chinese encyclopedia as clothing or a form of bodily embellishment rather than mutilation. One from 1591, for example, placed footbinding in a section on "Female Adornments" that included hairdos, powders, and ear piercings. According to Ko, the perception of footbinding as a civilized practice may be evinced from a Ming dynasty account that mentioned a proposal to "entice [the barbarians] to civilize their customs" by encouraging footbinding among their womenfolk.JOURNAL,weblink The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-Century China, Journal of Women's History, 8, 4, 1997, 8–27, 10.1353/jowh.2010.0171, Dorothy, Ko, 145191396, The practice was carried out only by women on girls, and it served to emphasize the distinction between male and female, an emphasis that began from an early age.BOOK, Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-century China,weblink registration, 1994, Stanford University Press, 978-0-8047-2359-6, 149–, Anthropologist Fred Blake argued that the practice of footbinding was a form of discipline undertaken by women themselves, and perpetuated by women on their daughters, so as to inform their daughters of their role and position in society, and to support and participate in the neo-Confucian way of being civilized.JOURNAL,weblink Foot-Binding in Neo-Confucian China and the Appropriation of Female Labor, C. Fred Blake, Signs, 19, 3, 1994, 676–712, 10.1086/494917, 40841025, 2016-10-29, 2018-10-25,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20181025003227weblink">weblink dead,

Feminist perspective

{{Violence against women|sp=uk}}Footbinding is often seen by feminists as an oppressive practice against women who were victims of a sexist culture.BOOK,weblink Confucianism and Women: A Philosophical Interpretation, Li-Hsiang Lisa Rosenlee, 139, 9780791481790, SUNY Press, February 2012, BOOK,weblink Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom: The Liberation of Women's Bodies in Modern China, Fan Hong, 9781136303142, Routledge, 2013-04-03, It is also widely seen as a form of violence against women.BOOK,weblink Ordinary Violence: Everyday Assaults against Women Worldwide, 2nd, Mary White Stewart, 423–437, Praeger, 27 January 2014, 9781440829383, BOOK,weblink Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence, 1, Claire M. Renzetti, Jeffrey L. Edleson, 276–277, SAGE Publications, 6 August 2008, 978-1412918008, BOOK,weblink Gender Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Laura L. O'Toole, Jessica R. Schiffman, New York University Press, 1 March 1997, 978-0814780411, 6, Bound feet rendered women dependent on their families, particularly the men, as they became largely restricted to their homes.BOOK, Fairbank, John King, The Great Chinese Revolution, 1800–1985,weblink registration, 1986, Harper & Row, New York, 70, 9780060390570, Thus, the practice ensured that women were much more reliant on their husbands.JOURNAL, Le, Huy Anh S., 2014, Revisiting Footbinding: The Evolution of the Body as Method in Modern Chinese History,weblink Inquiries Journal, en, 6, 10, The early Chinese feminist Qiu Jin, who underwent the painful process of unbinding her own bound feet, attacked footbinding and other traditional practices. She argued that women, by retaining their small bound feet, made themselves subservient as it would mean women imprisoning themselves indoors. She believed that women should emancipate themselves from oppression, that girls can ensure their independence through education, and that they should develop new mental and physical qualities fitting for the new era.BOOK,weblink Footbinding, Feminism, and Freedom: The Liberation of Women's Bodies in Modern China, Hong Fan, Routledge, 90–96, 1 June 1997, 978-0714646336, The ending of the practice is seen as a significant event in the process of female emancipation in China,BOOK,weblink Footbinding, Feminism, and Freedom: The Liberation of Women's Bodies in Modern China, Hong Fan, Routledge, 1 June 1997, 978-0714646336, 1, and a major event in the history of Chinese feminism.In the late 20th century, some feminists have pushed back against the prevailing Western critiques of footbinding, arguing that the presumption that footbinding was done solely for the sexual pleasure of men denies the agency and cultural influence of women.Dorothy Ko, "Rethinking sex, female agency, and footbinding", Research on Women in Modern Chinese History / Jindai Zhongguo Funu Shi Yanjiu (1999), Vol. 7, pp 75–105

Other interpretations

Some scholars such as Laurel Bossen and Hill Gates reject the notion that bound feet in China were considered more beautiful, or that it was a means of male control over women, a sign of class status, or a chance for women to marry well (in general, bound women did not improve their class position by marriage). Footbinding is believed to have spread from elite women to civilian women and there were large differences in each region. The body and labor of unmarried daughters belonged to their parents, thereby the boundaries between work and kinship for women were blurred.JOURNAL, Gates, Hill, 2001, Footloose in Fujian: Economic Correlates of Footbinding, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 43, 1, 130–148, 10.1017/S0010417501003619, 2696625, 18193574, 11299781, 0010-4175, They argued that foot binding was an instrumental means to reserve women to handwork, and can be seen as a way by mothers to tie their daughters down, train them in handwork, and keep them close at hand.WEB,weblink Unraveling a brutal custom, Colleen Walsh, Harvard Gazette, December 9, 2011, BOOK, Footbinding and Women's Labor in Sichuan, Hill Gates,weblink Routledge, 2014, 978-0-415-52592-3, This argument has been challenged by Shepherd 2018, who shows there was no connection between handicraft industries and the proportion of women bound in Hebei.BOOK, Shepherd, John R., Footbinding as Fashion, 2018, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 113–143, Footbinding was common when women could do light industry, but where women were required to do heavy farm work they often did not bind their feet because it hindered physical work. These scholars argued that the coming of the mechanized industry at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, such as the introduction of industrial textile processes, resulted in a loss of light handwork for women, removing a reason to maintain the practice. Mechanization resulted in women who worked at home facing a crisis. Coupled with changes in politics and people's consciousness, the practice of foot binding disappeared in China forever after two generations. More specifically, the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing (after the First Opium War) opened five cities as treaty ports where foreigners could live and trade. This led to foreign citizens residing in the area, where many proselytized as Christian missionaries. These foreigners condemned many long-standing Chinese cultural practices like footbinding as "uncivilized" — marking the beginning of the end for the centuries-long practice.It has been argued that while the practice started out as a fashion, it persisted because it became an expression of Han identity after the Mongols invaded China in 1279, and later the Manchus' conquest in 1644, as it was then practised only by Han women.BOOK,weblink 40–41, China Chic: East Meets West, Valerie Steele, John S. Major, Yale University Press, 2000, 978-0-300-07931-9, During the Qing dynasty, attempts were made by the Manchus to ban the practice but failed, and it has been argued the attempts at banning may have in fact led to a spread of the practice among Han Chinese in the 17th and 18th centuries.BOOK,weblink Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding, Dorothy Ko, University of California Press, 2008, 266, 978-0-520-25390-2, Shepherd 2018 provides a critical review of the evidence cited for the notion that footbinding was an expression of "Han identity" and rejects this interpretation.BOOK, Shepherd, John R., Footbinding as Fashion, 2018, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 23–31,

In literature, film, and television

{{more citations needed section|date=April 2022}}The bound foot has played a prominent part in many media works, both Chinese and non-Chinese, modern and traditional.Mei Ching Liu, "Women and the Media in China: An Historical Perspective", Journalism Quarterly 62 (1985): 45-52. These depictions are sometimes based on observation or research and sometimes on rumors or supposition. Sometimes, as in the case of Pearl Buck's The Good Earth (1931), the accounts are relatively neutral or empirical, implying respect for Chinese culture.{{efn|Though The Good Earth features neutral or empirical accounts of foot binding, Buck's previous novel, East Wind: West Wind explored the unbinding of a woman's feet, experienced as frightening and painful yet finally empowering, as part of her transition into a new, more modern and more individualistic persona under her doctor husband's tutelage.}} 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.Patricia Ebrey, "Gender and Sinology: Shifting Western Interpretations of Footbinding, 1300–1890", Late Imperial China 20.2 (1999): 1-34.

• Quoted in the Jin Ping Mei ({{circa|1610}}): "displaying her exquisite feet, three inches long and no wider than a thumb, very pointed and with high insteps."BOOK, The Golden Lotus, Volume 1, 1979, Graham Brash (PTE) Ltd, Singapore, 101,
• Anna Bunina mentions the custom in her 1810 fable "" (The Peking Stadium), which describes a Chinese woman attempting to run a race and barely finishing the boys' course, yet still getting applause for the effort. Bunina used the custom as an allegory to her own difficulties in getting recognition as a poetweblink
• Flowers in the Mirror (1837) by Ju-Chen Li includes chapters set in the "Country of Women", where men bear children and have bound feet.BOOK,weblink registration, Flowers in the Mirror, Ruzhen Li, translation by Lin Tai-yi, University of California Press, 1965, 978-0-520-00747-5,
• The Three-Inch Golden Lotus (1994) by Feng JicaiBOOK, The Three Inch Lotus,weblink registration, Jicai, Feng, Wakefield, David, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1994, 9780585250052, presents a satirical picture of the movement to abolish the practice, which is seen as part of Chinese culture.
• In the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), Ingrid Bergman portrays a 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 fulfil. Later, the children are able to escape troops by walking miles to safety.
• Ruthanne Lum McCunn wrote a biographical novel, Thousand Pieces of Gold (1981, adapted into a 1991 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 labor.
• 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.JOURNAL, Newman, Judie, 2007-06-01, The Readerly Politics of Western Domination : Emily Prager's "A Visit from the Footbinder",weblink Journal of the Short Story in English. Les Cahiers de la nouvelle, en, 48, 1969-6108,
• Jung Chang's family autobiography Wild Swans presents the story of Yu-fang, the grandmother, who had bound feet from the age of two.
• Lisa Loomer's play The Waiting Room (1994) 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. She describes the foot-binding process, as well as the physical and psychological harm her bound feet have caused.BOOK, Gecgil, Emine, New Women's Writing: Contextualising Fiction, Poetry and Philosophy, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018, 978-1-5275-0814-9, Bhattacharjee, Subashish, 191–205, Narayan Ray, Girindra,
• Lensey Namioka's novel Ties that Bind, Ties that Break (1999) follows a girl named Ailin in China who refuses to have her feet bound, which comes to affect her future.WEB,weblink Children's Book Review: Ties That Bind, Ties That Break by Lensey Namioka, Publishers Weekly, May 1999, April 23, 2018,
• Lisa See's novel Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (2005) is about two Chinese girls who are destined to be friends. The novel is based upon the sacrifices women make to be married and includes the two girls being forced into getting their feet bound. The book was adapted into a 2011 film directed by Wayne Wang.
• The Filipino horror film Feng Shui and its sequel Feng Shui 2 feature a ghost of a foot-bound woman inhabits a bagua and cursed those who holds the item.
• Lisa See's novel China Dolls (2014) describes Chinese family traditions including footbinding.
• Xiran Jay Zhao's novel Iron Widow (2021) is set in a futuristic medieval China that still practices footbinding. The main character, Wu Zetian, had her feet bound in childhood and suffers from chronic pain due to it.
• Edward Rutherfurd's novel China: An Epic Novel, is set in late Qing Dynasty China, when footbinding was still common practice among Han Chinese in the north. Bright Moon, the daughter of a main character Mei-Ling, has her feet bound to increase her chances of a good marriage, and the practice is described in detail. The character soon resents that she has her feet bound, as it causes her severe pain, and stops her from participating in many activities.
• In episode 9 of the anime series Apothecary Diaries, a servant girl was found dead in a moat. After an autopsy, it was found that she had her feet bound.

See also

• Artificial cranial deformation
• Body modification
• Foot Emancipation Society
• Women in ancient and imperial China

Explanatory notes

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Citations

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References and further reading

• Berg, Eugene E., MD, "Chinese Footbinding". Radiology Review – Orthopaedic Nursing 24, no. 5 (September/October) 66–67
• Berger, Elizabeth, Liping Yang, and Wa Ye. "Foot binding in a Ming dynasty cemetery near Xi'an, China". International journal of paleopathology 24 (2019): 79–88.
• Bossen, Laurel, and Hill Gates. Bound feet, young hands: tracking the demise of footbinding in village China (Stanford University Press, 2017).
• Brown, Melissa J., and Damian Satterthwaite-Phillips. "Economic correlates of footbinding: Implications for the importance of Chinese daughters' labor". PLOS ONE 13.9 (2018): e0201337. online
• Brown, Melissa J., et al., "Marriage Mobility and Footbinding in Pre-1949 Rural China: A Reconsideration of Gender, Economics, and Meaning in Social Causation". Journal of Asian Studies (2012), Vol. 71 Issue 4, pp 1035–1067
• JOURNAL, Brown, Melissa J., Footbinding in Economic Context: Rethinking the Problems of Affect and the Prurient Gaze, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 80, 1, 179–214, 2020, 10.1353/jas.2020.0007, 235848627, Review article.
• Cassel, Susie Lan (2007). {{"'}}...the Binding Altered Not only My Feet but My Whole Character': Footbinding and First-World Feminism in Chinese American Literature". Journal of Asian American Studies. Vol. 10 (1): 31–58. Project Muse and Ethnic Newswatch.
• Fan Hong (1997) Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom. London: Frank Cass
• Hughes, Roxane. Ambivalent Orientalism: Footbinding in Chinese American History, Culture and Literature. Diss. Université de Lausanne, Faculté des lettres, 2017.
• Ko, Dorothy (2005) Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding. Los Angeles: University of California Press.
• JOURNAL,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20111203205602weblink">weblink 3 December 2011, Dorothy, Ko, Perspectives on Foot-binding, ASIANetwork Exchange, XV, 3, 2008,weblink
• BOOK, Levy, Howard S., The Lotus Lovers: The Complete History of the Curious Erotic Tradition of Foot Binding in China, 1991, Prometheus Books, New York,
• Ping, Wang. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.
• Shepherd, John R. "The Qing, the Manchus, and Footbinding: Sources and Assumptions Under Scrutiny." Frontiers of History in China 11.2 (2016): 279–322.
• Shepherd, John R. Footbinding as Fashion: Ethnicity, Labor, and Status in Traditional China. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2018.
• BOOK,weblink Sexual life in ancient China:A Preliminary Survey of Chinese Sex and Society from Ca. 1500 B.C. Till 1644 A.D, Robert Hans van Gulik, 1961, Brill, 9004039171,
• The Virtual Museum of The City of San Francisco, "Chinese Foot Binding – Lotus Shoes"

Attributution

• {{PD-old-text|title=Encyclopædia of religion and ethics, Volume 8|year=1916|author=James Hastings, John Alexander Selbie, Louis Herbert Gray}}
• {{PD-old-text|title=The religions of China: Confucianism and Tâoism described and compared with Christianity|year=1880|author=James Legge}}

External links

• {{Commons and category inline|Category:Foot binding}}

{{Sexuality and gender in China}}{{Violence against women/end}}{{Sex fetish}}{{Authority control}}