The anti-footbinding thesis put forth by two ladies at the start of the Manchu dynasty stressed the immorality of mutilating the body and was not concerned with the more practical aspect of impairment for household tasks. In expressing their gratitude to the emperor for his having issued a decree of abolition, they cited the Confucian doctrine that since the body was a gift bestowed by one’s parents, it should not be tampered with or altered. It was also argued that it was wrong to upset in any way the inextricable relationship of the four limbs. The duty of the parent was to love the children equally: “Now parental love by its very nature does not discriminate between boys and girls. Can only girls be without persons [to feel compassion for them]?”
Towards the end of the Manchu dynasty, opposition to footbinding became more widespread, within the larger movement for reform, modernization, and feminine equality. Two of the chief proponents were reform leaders K’ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch’i-ch’ao. K’ang Yu-wei advocated abolition in Kwangtung Province as early as 1882, but failed to evoke a mass response because the time was still premature. Later, his younger brother K’ang Kuang-jen propagandized likewise and achieved some results. K’ang Yu-wei started an Unbound Foot Association at Canton in 1894, later moved it to Shanghai, and made this one of the reforms for which he struggled.
K’ang’s most eloquent writing on the subject was probably the memorial which he submitted to the throne in 1898, decrying the survival of footbinding as an outmoded vestige of the past which helped to prevent China from taking its rightful place in the modern world. He requested that further binding be prohibited and that women all be ordered to let their feet out. The penalty he proposed was somewhat reminiscent of the early Manchu edict; remiss officials were to be deprived of their privileges and householders were to receive a monetary fine, doubled if the tiny-footed offender in the family were under twelve. One of his principal arguments was that China was losing face among the community of nations:
... all countries have international relations, so that if one commits the slightest error the others ridicule and look down on it. Ours is definitely not a time of seclusion. Now China is narrow and crowded, has opium addicts and streets lined with beggars. Foreigners laugh at us for these things and criticize us for being barbarians. There is nothing which makes us objects of ridicule so much as footbinding.
K’ang traced the evolution toward a more enlightened culture in China, showing how the ancient criminal penalty of severing the feet was later nullified by benevolent sovereigns. It was in this context of the search toward progress that he described the abnormal and inhuman treatment of the young and innocent child, whose limbs were so impaired that she had to ". . . get up by holding on to the bed and cling to a wall for support when walking.” The poor with tiny feet were seriously inconvenienced in the performance of their many tasks, while the rich transmitted weak offspring as a direct result of their having been physically harmed.
With posterity so weakened, how can we engage in battle? I look at Europeans and Americans, so strong and vigorous because their mothers do not bind feet and therefore have strong offspring. Now that we must compete with other nations, to transmit weak offspring is perilous.
K’ang Yu-wei’s association came to number more than ten thousand followers. Natural-foot societies began to spring up everywhere, with main quarters in the cities and branches in the countryside. Progress was slow at the start, with conservative opposition from the villages particularly stubborn. Abolition was resisted and interpreted as an alien idea imported from the West. In an effort to combat the natural-foot societies, malicious stories were circulated which maligned the leadership. The story was told, for example, of the supervisor of a Shanghai branch who publicly favored emancipation but had a bound-foot wife. He was in constant fear of her and was once punished by being made to lick her feet. The narrator, writing in 1897, said that the incident became known to outsiders. They nicknamed the henpecked husband “the Supervisor Who Licks Feet,” a play on words, since the words sounded identical to those meaning “Natural-Foot Supervisor.”
Most of the natural-foot societies operated the same way. Members would vow neither to bind the feet of their children nor to allow their sons to marry girls other than with natural feet. The societies held mass meetings, published songs and tracts, and secured official support in getting their propaganda widely distributed. Every effort was made to influence the parents: “If the child’s parents do not pity her but bind her feet unmercifully, how can she be expected on some future day to pity her own children?” The tracts were easy to understand and were aimed at the masses. Footbinding was condemned as a profitless and injurious thing which meant lifelong pain and suffering. It made getting around inconvenient; a natural-footed woman, for example, could buy medicine for her sick parents in less than half the time it took the tiny-footed. Development and growth of everything in the universe was natural, it was argued, and the body needed a firm base just as a house did. A person who failed to grow would consult a doctor, but in footbinding medicines were used instead to stunt growth. The saying that without bound feet one couldn’t find a husband was dismissed as being demonstrably stupid: “Even cripples and the blind find husbands; why can’t someone who is perfectly normal?” Confucius was cited as having favored changing wrong to right, with the implication that he too would have joined the emancipation movement. A Christian point of view, that since God made man and woman the same parents should not try to make them different, was also emphasized. The drawbacks of footbinding and the delights of natural feet were summarized in easily remembered slogans:
1. Why was my natural foot ruined?
2. Kuanyin is barefooted; why did I have to have bound feet?
3. You can’t get anything done with bound feet, and yet it takes great effort.
4. It is easy to get sick, because one’s blood circulation gets stopped up.
5. Because of tiny feet I can’t be filial towards my own parents, and I feel apologetic to my in-laws because I can’t perform manual labor for them.
6. I get angry to the point of illness because of the pain, but my own mother won’t let me loosen the binding.
7. The tiny-footed are prone to being deceived by evil men.
8. Poor women bind their feet. There is no food in the house, but they can’t go out to get firewood and the necessities of life.
9. People feel that poorly-bound feet are ugly and not clean enough.
10. Don’t make the younger generation suffer, but let out the feet in order to cause the family to prosper.
1. I can work easily.
2. I have freedom, and my parents don’t worry about my foot size.
3. Convenience; Goddess Kuanyin is also large-footed.
4. I can visit my parents whenever I want, even though they live far away.
5. When my husband is away, I can take care of anything which occurs at home.
6. A large-footed woman is not easily deceived, and she has no problem in keeping her feet clean.
7. To eradicate the evil age of footbinding is to restore the intent of our ancient Sages, who elevated natural-footedness.