CONCUBINES
andFOOTBINDING
Female Subordination in China
What is Footbinding?
Foot binding was the deliberate process of tightly binding the feet in order to re-figure them to fit into three inch shoes.
The foot binding system in traditional China was a meticulous and excruciating process that left hundreds of millions of women from the Shang to Qing dynasties permanently crippled. The procedure began early in life and was impossible to reverse. It aimed to move the heel as close to the toes as possible in order to achieve the three-inch foot "golden lotus" beauty standard.
Foot binding was carried out by mothers or grandmothers as soon as girls reached in-between ages four and seven. Because the bones and the arches in their feet had not yet fully developed, it was essential that foot binding was to be performed early in life. This practice was initiated during Winter, so that the young girls' feet would be numb in the cold season, hence limiting the debilitating pain.
The next step was to soak the feet in warm animal blood and a mixture of herbs to apparently soften the tissue, allowing the feet to be broken with less trouble. Next, the toenails would be heavily trimmed back to limit in-growth and the chance of an infection (which could,worst case, lead to disease and eventually death).
Next, cotton bandages (sometimes silk was wrapped over the cotton) were tightly bound over the heel and toes excluding the big toe, and pressure would be applied until the girl's toes broke under the weight, forcing the four small toes underneath the ball of the foot closer to the heel.
In order for the girl to further shrink her feet, often times mothers or older figures would beckon the girls to walk long distances, further forcing the broken toes closer to the heel.
Depending on the status of the girl, bandages would be re-applied anywhere from daily to once every two weeks. Every time the bandage was re-applied in its figure-eight pattern, it was stretched tighter.
By the time the woman achieved the desired three-inch golden lotus, their feet looked like the one's pictured above. With bound feet, mobility was limited, and a woman must walk on her heels for the rest of her life to avoid excruciating pain.
History of Foot Binding
The true origins of foot binding in China have largely remained a mystery. There are multiple stories and fables explaining the origins of foot binding in traditional China, however there is no distinct date in which the practice first began. Most commonly, historians tend to agree that foot binding sprang up around the late Tang dynasty (618 to 908 CE), however many others believe that the traditional practice goes back into the Shang dynasty during 1600 BCE to 1046 BCE).
The most popular and historically accurate tale of the origins of foot binding in China follows the story of a talented dancer of the emperor named Yao Niang. According to the Hong Kong Medical Journal,"[emperor Li Yu] ordered his favourite courtesan, Yao Niang (窅娘) to dance on a 6-foot-high golden lotus, with her feet bound with white silk cloth into the shape of a new moon. Other dancers soon imitated the practice to attract the attention of the emperor," (Lee, Tung). As foot binding gained popularity, the prized crescent moon-shaped feet began to be called 'golden lotuses' as a testament to Yao Niang's dance.
Another popular story of the origins of foot binding date back to a much earlier time in history. According to legend, a Shang dynasty empress named Daji had clubfoot, a medical condition in which the limbs are disfigured in the womb, so she pleaded to the emperor to demand that all women in the royal court bound their feet so that hers became the standard of beauty.
Left: A woodblock print of Yao Niang binding her feet.
originally illustrated by Wang Hui in "A Hundred Poems of Beautiful Women" during the Qing dynasty
van Gulik, Robert, Sexual Life in Ancient China, 1961, Accessed 20 March 2019.
Whether foot binding came from Yao Niang's dance or from the demands of Empress Daji, one thing remains certain: foot binding was the result of strengthening patriarchy in China. Accompanying the rise of Neo-Confucianism from roughly the ninth to early seventeenth centuries CE came more restrictions on what women could and could not do.
For example, ideas of yin and yang were revitalized by Neo-Confucianism. The belief was that women were yin; fragile, soft, negative, and dependent on yang; which was strong, bright, and restless. Foot binding played a role in making the woman seem more vulnerable and delicate to their yang counterparts due to the horrendous foot pain they suffered. Moreover, the Confucian idea of filial piety and a woman's dedication and respect to her ancestors proves to be another explanation to the popularity of foot binding.
For example, women, by tradition, were in charge of the ancestral shrines in a family home. Because of foot binding and the revitalization of filial piety, she was further tied to the home due to her limited mobility.
The gruesome practice of foot binding became a type of unofficial "social law" by the Qing or Manchu dynasty from 1644 to 1912 CE. By this time, foot binding was so popular that if a woman wanted to be married, she had to have small golden lotus feet.
In 1911, foot binding was officially banned in China due to the large numbers of young girls who were dying from foot infections. In the following couple years, fines were issued to those who did not unbind their feet. However, despite common anti-foot binding campaigns and the ban on the horrifying practice, women continued to bind their feet in private until the 1950's in Yunnan Province. The last recorded case of newly bound feet was in 1957. It was not until 1999, however, when the "lotus shoes" stopped being manufactured for tourists by the Zhiqiang Shoe Factory.