Footbinding Develops in Chinese Society

Date c. 1000

Locale China

The painful custom of footbinding was practiced for a thousand years in China. The bound foot was an object of erotic worship and defined feminine beauty. The custom also reflected Confucian social values and helped keep women in a subordinate social position.

Key Figures

• Li Yu (Li Yü; 937–978), poet and the last Southern Tang kingdom ruler, r. 961–975
• Yaoniang (Yao Niang; fl. tenth century), favorite concubine of Li Yu and believed to be the first woman with bound feet

History

"Footbinding" pertains to the Chinese custom of using wrapped bandages or gauze strips to retard the natural development of a female’s feet. It was practiced mainly by the Han Chinese, the majority ethnic group named after the Han Dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE). Usually, between the ages of four and eight, a young girl would receive the initial wrappings by her mother. A few years later, the feet would be bound so as to bend all toes, except the big toe, under and into the sole. The sole and heel were forced as close together as possible. After a year of extreme pain, the feet would become numb. To keep the feet tiny, the binding continued throughout the woman’s life. Special shoes for bound feet were called gilded lilies (jinlian), arched shoes (gongxie), and embroidered slippers (xiuxie).

The exact origin of footbinding has been controversial. Chinese folklore and oral tradition provide many origin myths. According to one story, a Shang Dynasty (1600–1066 BCE) empress had a clubfoot, which made compressed feet a standard of beauty. In another version, the empress was actually a fox in human disguise, who had to hide her paws. A variation of this presents the fox as Da Ji, the favorite concubine of the king of Zhou, the last Shang emperor. Da Ji, who had been sent by the gods to destroy the corrupt kingdom, hid her fox’s feet by wrapping them in cloth.

The "golden lotus" was invented by the ruler of the state of Qi (Ch’i) and the marquis of Donghun, Xiao Baojuan (Hsiao Pao-chüan; r. 499–501). He created gilded gold lotus petals on the floor and had his concubine, Pan, walk on them, each step resembling a lotus. Later, "golden lotus" became a poetic metaphor for bound feet.

Glorification of small feet was evident in a Tang Dynasty (T’ang; 618–907) tale that appeared in the Chinese anthology, Yuyangzu (c. 850–860). This story about Yexian (Yen-shen), the Chinese Cinderella, was based on an oral tradition of cave dwellers in southern China, possibly in Yongzhou in Guangxi Province. The tale relates that before the first imperial dynasty, the Qin (Ch’in, 221-206 BCE), there lived a chieftain called Wu-the-Cave. His first wife, Yexian’s mother, died, and his new wife was cruel to Yexian. After escaping from a party, Yexian dropped a beautiful golden slipper, which the cave people sold to the Tuohan king. The slipper was too small for anyone in his kingdom. Finally, the king found Yexian, whose tiny foot could fit into the slipper, and he married her.

The most precise and accepted account of the beginning of footbinding appears in the twelfth century writings of Zhang Bangji (Chang Panchi), who asserted that footbinding did not begin earlier than in the court of the sovereign poet Li Yu , the last ruler of the Southern Tang kingdom (937–975), one of the kingdoms in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907–960). Li Yu built a six-foot (two-meter) tall, gold-gilded lotus flower as a dance platform for his favorite concubine, Yaoniang. He ordered her to bind her feet with strips of cloth into the shape of a crescent moon and then dance in the lotus flower. Small bound feet soon became fashionable among the court women and an object of erotic attention.

Archaeological evidence verifies that in the thirteenth century, footbinding was practiced among upper-class women in southern China, during the Southern Song Dynasty (Sung, 1127–1279). In 1975, the tomb of Lady Huang Sheng (1227–1243) was discovered in the southern coastal city of Fuzhou, Fujian Province. In her tomb were tiny shoes, each with an upturned big toe and ranging in size from 5.25 to 5.5 inches by 1.75 to 2 inches (13.3 to 14 centimeters by 4.4 to 5 centimeters). A similar pair of shoes belonging to Lady Luo Shuangshuang, the first wife of a scholar, Shi Shengzu (d. 1274), was discovered in his tomb in Quzhou, north of Fuzhou. Years later, seven pairs of tiny shoes belonging to Madame Zhou (1240–1274) were discovered in a tomb in De’an, northwest of Fuzhou and Quzhou.

Therefore, footbinding, which began among imperial dancers in the tenth century, had spread to the upper class by the thirteenth century and was used to restrict women to their homes. During the Song Dynasty, neo-Confucianism and conservative views of marriage prevailed. Zhu Xi (Chi Hsi; 1130–1200), the great Song philosopher, endorsed footbinding as a means of promoting the separation of men and women in southern Fujian.

Beginning in the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368), the Mongol dynasty founded by Kublai Khan, footbinding was an indicator of upper-class or aristocratic status. Also, according to a Yuan treatise, bound feet guaranteed female chastity.

Footbinding became even more popular during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The custom was officially sanctioned and glorified in Ming literature. The footbinding process itself revolved around festival days or Daoist auspicious days and numerous other superstitions and customs. In addition, the "golden lotus" had become a prerequisite to a proper marriage, beginning with elaborate bridal shoes embroidered with sayings regarding good fortune.

Decline

During the Qing Dynasty (Ch’ing, 1644–1911), the Manchu rulers were opposed to footbinding and attempted repeatedly to ban the practice, but their restrictive policy only caused the practice to become even more widespread. However, there were other forces at work that gradually helped abolish footbinding. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, many Chinese leaders were fighting for women’s rights. Jing hua yuan (1810–1820; Flowers in the Mirror, 1965), the famous novel by Li Ruzhen (Li Juchen), vividly exposes the pain and humiliation of footbinding. The plot follows the travel of a merchant to a kingdom in which the sex roles are reversed, and submissive men have crippled, bound feet. In the late nineteenth century, foreign missionaries and liberal reformers openly criticized footbinding, and international condemnation spurred Chinese intellectuals to action.

Toward the end of the Qing Dynasty, antifootbinding sentiment was widespread within larger movements for gender equality and modernization. In 1894, philosopher and reform leader Kang Youwei (K’ang Yu-wei) started the Unbound Foot Association in Canton. Soon, natural-foot societies were everywhere, holding mass meetings and publishing literature and songs. In 1902, the empress dowager issued an imperial decree against footbinding. Although of a voluntary nature, it gave respectability to the natural-foot movement.

When the Nationalist government overthrew the last Chinese monarchy in 1911 and established the Republic of China (1911–1949), it banned footbinding completely. Although it was still practiced in some areas until the beginning of the Communist regime in 1949, many developments in Chinese society favored natural feet. Western-educated young men did not want old-fashioned women with bound feet, and more women became educated. The tradition lingered on, however, and the last factory producing lotus shoes did not close until 1999.

While the practice of footbinding all but died out by the mid-twentieth century, some women who had undergone the process lived into the twenty-first century. Most, like their predecessors, were so deformed that they could not walk. Some scholars took to documenting these women, both as a way to empower and celebrate those with what in contemporary society was a disability rather than a sign of beauty and in order to document a vanishing cultural tradition. Photographer Jo Farrell, who beginning in 2005 spent nine years tracking down any footbinding survivors she could (she located only fifty, some over a hundred years old), noted the importance of educating people about the past, no matter how gruesome it may be according to modern standards. She even found five women who continued to bind their feet, living in hiding. Many efforts to preserve images and memories of women who were subjected—or subjected themselves—to the ancient practice of footbinding attempted to show the human aspects of the practice, rather than stigmatize it as a barbarous horror.

Significance

Originally a way of enhancing dance in the imperial court of the tenth century, footbinding eventually spread to even peasants. In doing so it became a complex part of Chinese culture marked by numerous dualities. Although tortuous and unnatural in many ways, it was a popular tradition passed from mother to young daughter and became deeply engrained in an evolving culture. The "lotus blossom" symbolized women’s subservience to men in a Confucian society as the physical crippling helped restrict women to their homes. At the same time, the tiny feet represented feminine beauty and sensuality, and the practice was carried on by women themselves, many of whom were proud of and emotionally connected to the tradition. For a thousand years, footbinding profoundly defined and affected many Chinese women’s lives.

Bibliography

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