World Geography

Chinese Culture: Foot Binding

Introduction:
The Chinese practice of foot binding, though no longer practiced, was an important
cultural tradition throughout China for thousands of years. Foot binding was a symbol of
chastity, femininity, grace and sensuality; it was also a symbol of oppression, torture,
pain and suffering.

Directions:
Read through the vocabulary words below before reading the article. Make sure you
understand their meanings; they are critical to fully appreciate the practice of foot
binding. Analyze the pictures, read the article and excerpts and answer the questions at
the end of this packet on your own paper.

Vocabulary:
1. Concubine: A women who is a secondary wife to a married Chinese man.
2. Gentility: "Of gentle birth" and refinement; of upper-class status.
3. Lucrative: Producing wealth, profitable.
4. Mincing: Walking or moving with short, affectedly dainty steps.
5. Foot binding: An old Chinese custom of wrapping a girl's feet so that they wouldn’t
grow.
6. Odiferous: Smelling bad, odorous.

These images represent the results of foot

binding. The top foot to the right
represents the skeleton of a normal foot,
while the middle picture shows a bound
foot. The bottom is a skeletal sketch of the
results of foot binding.

Above: A side view of a foot that has been
unwrapped after being bound for decades.
Above: Unwrapped, bound feet, facing the
bottom of the foot.
"When I was seven my mother….washed
and placed alum on my feet and cut my
toenails. She then bent my toes toward the
plantar with a binding cloth ten feet long
and two inches wide doing the right foot
first and then the left. She...ordered me to
walk but when I did the pain proved
unbearable, that night...my feet felt on fire
and I couldn't sleep; mother struck me for
crying. On the following days I tried to hide
but was forced to walk on my feet...after
several months all toes but the big one
were pressed against the inner surface..
mother would remove the bindings and
wipe the blood and pus which dripped from
my feet. She told me that only with removal
of the flesh could my feet become
slender...every two weeks I changed to
new shoes. Each new pair was one to two
tenths of an inch smaller than the previous
one....In summer my feet smelled
offensively because of pus and blood; in
winter my feet felt cold because of lack of
circulation...four of the toes were curled in
like so many dead caterpillars...it took two
years to achieve the three inch model...my
shanks were thin, my feet became
humped, ugly and odoriferous. "
 The top view of a foot that has been bound for years.
Foot Binding
The practice of foot binding began in the Sung Dynasty, sometime between 960-976 BC.
It is reported that a prince had a concubine who was required to dance with her feet
bound. The prince forced his concubine to dance with bound feet because he had a
fetish with tiny feet. This caused traditional family values to dictate that the feet of young
girls should be bound to keep them small. The term "Lily feet" was used to describe the
tiny feet because they were thought to be very beautiful and a symbol of gentility and
high-class.

The actual foot binding process began when a girl was between the ages of three and
eleven years old. First the inner foot of the child was washed in hot water and then
massaged. Then all of the toes, except the first toe, were broken, turned under, pressed
to the bottom of the foot, and bound tightly with cloth strips which kept the feet from
growing larger than ten centimeters or three point nine inches. Next, the arches were
broken as the foot was pulled straight with the leg. The cloth bandages would be tightly
wound around the foot from the toes to the ankle to hold the toes in place.

After about two or three years, the child’s feet actually shrank to the point that they could
fit into shoes that were only three inches long. These tiny shoes, which were called
"lotus shoes", were made of silk and were decorated with beautiful embroidery. The
results of the foot binding were highly deformed feet that were extremely painful to walk
on. Many times, the toes actually fell off because the bandages were wrapped so tight
that blood could no longer reach them.

The purpose of foot binding was to identify women of high-class, and to keep a woman
from "wandering". The bound feet kept control over the women because the pain was so
intense that they could not even walk short distances without assistance. In the upper
class of China, a good marriage would be impossible to arrange if the girl did not have
small feet.

The practice of foot binding lasted far over one thousand years until the Manchu Dynasty
was toppled in 1911 and the New Republic was formed. It was at this time that foot
binding was outlawed.

Foot binding mangles the feet of these people, and causes many other disabilities. The
University of California San Francisco did a study that looked at the "prevalence and
consequences" of foot binding, and how it was linked to osteoporosis in China. The
study included women from the ages of seventy to one hundred. Of those women
studied, the ones that had had their feet bound were thirty eight percent more likely to
suffer from a fall than those who never had their feet bound. The study also discovered
that the women with bound feet had a 5.1 percent lower hip bone density and a four
point seven percent lower spine bone density than women with normal feet, putting them
at greater risk of suffering hip or spine fractions.
“Chinese Culture: Foot Binding” ksks.essortment.com/chineseculture_rdpp.htm Date of
access: May 26, 2002

Foot Binding: Primary Source

I was born in 1920. My home was located in a small village in Shandong Province,
China. My father was a poor peasant. He had three older sisters and one younger
brother.

Carrying on the custom from the older generations, my feet were bound when I was six
years old. Perhaps a six-year-old girl’s feet were the perfect length for binding.
My grandmother took about one metre of white cloth which was woven by herself at
home and divided it into three long one-metre strips, then the binding started. She left
my big toe, and folded down the rest of the toes under the sole of the foot and then used
the strips to tie it in many layers… You can imagine, a six-year-old girl’s feet and how
delicate they were, but if they were tied very tightly and changed the natural shape, how
painful it must be... With the pain of the feet, I was forced to push around a big rock used
as a mill for grinding. I walked and walked, step by step, many, many circuits in order to
form the binding cone shape and to make the process more efficient. The suffering is
really beyond people’s imagination.

A few years later, the Revolutionary Party broke into the unenlightened village. The
members of the Party spread the idea of revolution which included women’s liberation.
They tried to stop men wearing plaits and women’s feet binding. They went to every
house and checked and forced the girls whose feet had been bound to remove the strips
of cloth. Before they came in the house, my grandmother unbound my feet and my
sisters’ feet, but once the people left the house, my grandmother rebound our feet again.
When the feet were unbound, my sisters and I cried, because of the pain which was
caused by the unbinding. But when my grandmother rebound our feet, it would be more
painful and we cried again.

My sisters and I endured the pain and gradually unbound our feet. We got rid of the long
strips first and wore a pair of very tight cloth socks instead. Gradually the feet started to
grow again. When I married in 1942, my feet had already become jie fang jiao (liberated
feet).
I used to watch my feet carefully. They are much smaller than average. I am 1.7 metres
tall but my feet are only 22 centimetres long. The big toe seems normal, but the rest of
the toes are very flat and folded down under the sole of the foot. There are some small
scars between the instep and the toes. The scars were made when my feet were first
bound, the bone of the toes were broken and became inflamed, so the scars remained
until now. The pain has gone a long time ago.

I now live in Beijing and enjoy helping to look after my grandchildren and decorating my
house with beautiful flowers.

Mrs Sun Mei Ting, 79, Beijing

(Story told by Mrs Sun Mei Ting and translated by her daughter Ms Li Chao Huang)

Foot binding and social status:

Foot binding began as a luxury among the rich; it made the women more dependant on
others and less useful around the house. This was especially hard on the poor who
needed help around the house or farm. It soon became a prerequisite for marriage. It
was even a just reason for a man to call off marriage if he found out that the woman that
had been arranged for him to marry did not have bound feet. It came that foot binding
was the only right thing to do for a daughter, Many lower class families who really could
not afford to bind their daughters feet, due to the loss of labor she would have
contributed to the family, did so an anyway in hopes that she would be able to "marry
up" into the middle class. It is sad because there are very few accounts of women who
were successful. These women would end up suffering trying to work in the fields
tottering on their bound feet. A mother was obligated to bind her daughters feet or she
almost certainly would never get married. The bound foot woman had to walk with all of
her weight on her heels and tottered as she walked. This was considered very charming,
since a bound foot woman was largely restricted to her home, bound feet became a
symbol of chastity. The thinking was that the bound foot, once it was formed, could not
be unlocked like a chastity belt.

“Chinese Foot Binding” http://www.angelfire.com/ca/beekeeper/foot.html Date of Access:

May 26, 2002

Foot binding and sexuality:

To parents, having daughters with tiny feet symbolized that her family was so rich that
their daughters did not have to work, thus elevating the status of the family.
Undoubtedly, foot binding was "partly powered by a sexual fetish" among Chinese men.
Extensive sexual guides specify countless special techniques involving the use of bound
foot for sex. In addition, the small, unsure steps of a woman with lotus feet were
considered very feminine, while the inability to walk long distances helped to ensure the
girl's virginity, as she could not leave home.

“Women and Foot Binding In China” http://www-ec.njit.edu/~jkc1763/fb.htm Date of

 Access: May 26, 2002

Assignment
Answer the following questions on your own paper. You do not need to copy down the
questions, but your answers must be in complete sentences.

1. Summarize, in 1 – 2 paragraphs, the practice of foot binding. Include specific

information on who it was done to, by whom, how, what their rationale was, how
it started, and when it was discontinued.

2. It is said that it was impossible for a Chinese mother to love her daughter and her
daughter’s feet at the same time. What do you think this means?

3. Chinese mothers knew the pain and suffering that they would cause their
daughters by binding their feet, yet they did it anyway. Why?

4. Imagine that you are a Chinese mother. Would you bind your daughter’s feet?
Why or why not?

5. Lily feet were considered extremely beautiful and sexy by the upper class and
high society, yet some considered it torture. Is there anything that you can think
of in modern American society that mirrors this practice? Explain.

6. Reflect on why only women – not men – had their feet bound. Why do you think
this is so? What does this say about ancient Chinese society? Do you think
these values reflect modern society – why or why not?

7. Read the following commentary:

“Foot binding survived sporadic reform efforts and lasted well into the 20th
century. Though outlawed in 1911 around the time China became a republic, it
wasn't stamped out in some parts of the country until the 1930s. The "natural
foot" campaign succeeded in part because of the improving status of women in
Chinese society, but a big factor was the recognition among educated Chinese
that the West considered the practice barbaric. Anti-foot-binding campaigns
could be quite cruel in their own right, with tiny-footed women forced to abandon
their bindings, which often proved scarcely less painful than binding in the first
place. But the aim was achieved; foot binding is unknown in China today. It now
survives only in the West, in the form of spike heels.”

Write a 1 – 2 paragraph response to this statement. What do you think, and

why?