A long forgotten memory was aroused after I received from a friend an article about the custom of foot-binding practiced long time ago in China, along with it were pictures depicting the misshaped bound feet.
Though the practice was outlawed a hundred years ago, it does not seem like that long ago. To think of it, our generation was dangerously close to that time frame. Suffice it to say that we almost could not escape from it; we missed it by one generation or two. Our generation is probably the last one to have been able to witness the vestige of this cruel, painful suffering inflicted upon our antecedents. The younger ones after us can Google the “three-inch golden lotus foot” digital pictures, or see the lotus shoes in the museums.
My maternal grandma had these feet. I recall seeing a daily ritual at young age that went like this: When the bedtime came, she would unwrap the long strip of binding cloth, put them aside and start washing her feet; and then after drying them, gingerly and skillfully wrap another clean piece of long cloth around each of the feet. The process took a long while to finish. As for my late mother, who was born in 1913, at this juncture when the last Chinese imperial dynasty had been barely overthrown and the old custom and practice, albeit banned under the new republic government, were still lingering on, she had the “released” kind or the “semi-bound” feet — they were larger than the ones as shown in the pictures yet still were distorted out of shape and smaller than the natural ones.
A year before my mother’s passing, she spoke about her rebellion against the practice in a conversation that I had hoped to know more about her, to explore her other sides unknown to me. She was forced to start foot-binding at very young age, maybe 4 ,5 or before that, I can’t pinpoint. After enduring a period of pain and suffering, she rebelled and succeeded, and so her feet were unbound from then on. Sadly, the deformity had taken shape. My impression of her strong will was reinforced in that conversation and with days gone by, I appreciate more that trait of her. If only I had her strength of will, I would be a much different person now. Because of the deformity, through out her life, she had hard time finding the right shoes that fitted her nicely and comfortably. Lucky for us that we weren’t born earlier, say, ninety years ago?
For comparison, those bound feet pictures in the article were accompanied by some photos of the 8-inch high square toe platform heels that are in vogue now. It’s shocking to see those variants of torturing shoes that modern women are wearing and enjoying very much. It looks like the wearer is tiptoeing her feet in a deep cup when walking. Could the shoes produce a swaying walk that’s self-satisfying? Don’t know, never tried. Attractive? can’t tell. One thing I know, though, is that the swaying walk resulted from the bound feet allegedly was the reason why men were attracted to women with bound feet in ancient China and thus the torturing custom of foot-binding.
Is the history repeating itself?
