Golden Lotuses

Its really funny how my mind works. I was TOTALLY bummed this Friday past with the news of the longer wait time before referral and by late Friday night my mind started to wander. Association can be an interesting thing. My mind wandered from can't go to not being able to travel to feet... of course, my love of all things Chinese kicked in and the next thing I know I'm thinking about history and foot binding. The associations make sense right? I'm stuck, can't travel to get Jade therefore I'm bound here in good ole NL for longer than expected. So I thought why not- blog time again. This practice has always fascinated me so settle in for a discussion on the ancient tradition of foot binding. All I ask is that you try to remove yourself from the "Western" perspective and examine it in Chinese terms. ( I've included two pictures but you need to click on the picture of the girl to really see her feet. Those 'little' shoes are amazing aren't they!)

Foot binding was an ancient Chinese custom of beauty and torture. It was passed from mother to daughter and from generation to generation. It was achieved by bending a young girl's (usually when she reached the age of 5 or 6) toes so that they pointed inward eventually breaking the arch of the foot and the whole process took two years to complete. They often began the binding in the fall as they believed that the cold weather would numb the pain. They would begin by soaking the feet in hot water to soften the skin, the feet were massaged and then bound with strips of cotton cloth two inches wide and ten feet long. They left the big toe alone and exposed for it was needed for balance. When they finished binding the feet the rest of the cotton strips were tied and she was forced to walk which quickly broke the arch of the feet. At the end of two years the girl was unable to walk without assistance.

The tradition began in the mid 10th century in the royal palaces of the Tang dynasty and ended during the 17th century when the practice spread to the lower class.The Chinese believed that the best shaped feet were tiny. The perfect foot could be no more than three inches long. The tiny feet were called 'golden lotuses'. If a girl's feet were more than 3 inches long she would be viewed as undesirable and un-marriageable ( it was said if a girl did not have bound feet she was more of a man than a woman and bound feet brought with it a MUCH higher bride price). A man's status was linked to his wife's bound feet. It meant he was wealthy enough to support an idle woman. Women in those days had to work in the fields and those who had their feet bound couldn't, they stayed home and 'lounged'- this was a symbol of wealth. Unbound feet began to be associated with lower class and rough work.
Many families bound their daughter's feet to show that they had a good reputation.
Men believed if they had a wife with bound feet it meant she was incapable of cheating on him or leave the marriage. Men thought that bound feet enabled a woman to walk like a flower blowing gently in a breeze making them graceful, erotic, sensual and respectful.

So, to sum it up, bound feet and the young age of the girls made them very desirable. They brought in a high bride price and were married off young. Men found bound feet highly sensual and that believed she would be faithful to the marriage.


Finally, during the Qing dynasty uprisings against the foot bindings began. The ruling family didn't believe in binding and called to have it abolished. Missionaries who entered China at the end of the Opium Wars saw the deformed feet and called it torture. Binding went from a symbol of beauty to a symbol of oppression and barbaric.
Foot binding had lasted 1,000 years before the Republic of China officially outlawed it.

Beauty or torture? I guess it all depends on which side of the fence you are standing on.