When the Chinese National Association of the Mass Education Movement made a population study of Tinghsien in 1929, a rural area 125 miles south of Peking, it secured figures to show the extent of footbinding among 1,736 females of 515 families. These were discussed by Sidney D. Gamble in an article which appeared in the American Journal of Sociology. As Mr. Gamble stated, “These figures, when correlated with the ages of the women, show very clearly how the cultural pattern changed in Tinghsien within thirty years and how foot-binding gradually disappeared, slowly at first and then with increasing rapidity, until it was completely discontinued about 1919.” The Tinghsien villagers were representative of the rural population, except that there was a slightly higher proportion of families with large land holdings. It was estimated in the study that footbinding ordinarily started when the girls were about three years old, or about two years earlier than the national average. The study was made in 1929. Of women born before 1890, who were forty years or older when the study was made, almost all bound their feet (99.— percent). Mr. Gamble raised a question as to why four women in this group had natural feet. The answer might lie in their having been very poor, orphaned, or in the lowest menial category. There was only a slight change in figures for those born between 1890 and 1899, a rise in the proportion of the natural-footed from .8% to 5%, indicating that reformist ideas were slowly catching on. It was after the turn of the century that significant changes occurred. The proportion of girls with normal feet rose to 18.5% from 1900 to 1904 and 40.3% from 1905 to 1909. Then came the Revolution and the elevation of woman’s social status, for which the elimination of footbinding was essential. Statistics show the sweeping effect in Tinghsien, for 80.5% of the girls born from 1910 to 1914 had unbound feet. The percentage increased to 94.4% for girls in the 1915-1919 group; from 1920 on, there were no new cases. In conclusion, commented Mr. Gamble, “Knowing the general conservatism of the countryside, it is remarkable to see how this old and well-established custom, which had lasted for almost one thousand years and had successfully defied imperial authority, disappeared completely in these Tinghsien families in a period of about twenty years, or less than one generation.”
The statistics for the Tinghsien study were as follows:
The Police Office in Amoy, a southern city on an island opposite the island fortress of Kinmen, issued census statistics in 1937 which included information on footbinding. The custom was practiced there from the Sung dynasty onwards. The move to eliminate footbinding started in Amoy before it did on the mainland. Bound-foot young married women there in 1937 were migrants from other parts of China. The total number of women in Amoy in 1937 was 71,332, of whom 3,288, or about 4.5%, still had bound feet. Their breakdown in ages was as follows: thirty and over, 3,082 (born in 1907 or earlier); over fifteen but under thirty, 202 (born after 1907); under fifteen, 4. Women in Amoy were called up for military training in 1937, but those whose feet were still bound or had been bound previously were excused. The local press reported incidents of fathers ordering daughters to bind their feet in order to avoid the military draft. The Tinghsien study was also noted by Nagao Ryuzo, the Japanese sociologist who was in China from a few years before the Russo-Japanese War to the end of the second World War. Nagao stated that when a population census was carried out in Shansi Province during 1932-3, the number of bound-foot women was also investigated. Shansi, incidentally, was a stronghold of conservative custom. The census figures for footbinding were as follows: under sixteen, 323,064; over sixteen but under thirty, 625,625. Not including the number over thirty, which was not revealed, there were almost a million young women in Shansi Province still observing the custom more than two decades after the Revolution. This was in sharp contrast to the Tinghsien and Amoy studies, which showed that by 1920 footbinding was already dying out in these areas. Nagao stated that Chinese government statistics in the thirties were extremely unreliable. However, the 1932-3 Shansi census probably erred on the side of understatement, since many with bound feet hid in order to avoid official censure. Nagao, traveling through Shansi in 1921, was impressed by the official posters outlawing footbinding which he found strategically placed throughout the capital city of Ta-t’ung and vicinity. Ta-t’ung was the most famous center of the “lotus” in China; Japanese medical units in North China after 1937 commented on the large number of tiny-footed, middle-aged women there.
It is evident that footbinding in the thirties among the middle-aged and older was still common and that the great success in eradicating it was with the young. My interviews in Taiwan (see Chapter Ten) showed that letting out the feet often resulted in bleeding or in such pain that walking became impossible. In such cases, binding had to be continued. The tenacity with which tradition-oriented women clung to this custom led to repeated legislation against it. A Peking daily in January, 1935, published a series of pronouncements by the Peking Municipal Government against footbinding, threatening punishment for violators. Issued more than twenty years after the Revolution, these directives must have been intended for the middle-aged die-hards. The press in the thirties still reported unceasing organizational efforts to eradicate this ancient practice. These frequent reports were evidence that it was a slow process to eliminate footbinding from the village centers of conservatism in which it was entrenched. Nagao wrote in 1941 of the influence of the New Life Movement which Chiang Kai-shek had launched. As one example, he cited a decree issued by the Provincial Governor of Shantung to the effect that women with bound feet would not be issued marriage permits. Such permits were to be granted only after each case had been investigated, to assure that the bride-to-be had natural feet as required by statute. However actual implementation depended on the attitude of the investigators, for it was reported that some Shantung women with bound feet were granted marriage licenses nevertheless.
The progress of eliminating footbinding in an area as vast and diverse as China was uneven and varied. A Japanese encyclopedia article published in 1932 remarked that women in the large cities had all let their feet out, with resistance confined to the villages. But the writer added that women in the Honan city of Loyang had recently reverted to the custom of binding feet and admiring them for their beauty. Goto Asataro, a less objective Japanese student of Chinese customs, in 1938 recorded his impressions of footbinding. He first confessed that he was prejudiced: “I have been in China for a long time; therefore, when I see a woman who has large [natural] feet, I have the feeling that she is not beautiful.” He stated that an observer who restricted himself to Shanghai and Peking might conclude that footbinding had ended, but asserted that eighty to ninety percent of the women in the rural areas still practiced it. This figure which Goto cited is undoubtedly exaggerated, and may be explained by his enthusiasm and personal interest in seeing that footbinding flourished. He stated the well-known fact that women in the Shansi provincial capital of Ta-t’ung had the tiniest feet in China, bound feet which were especially well pointed, took “lotus steps,” and did not seem to touch the ground. Goto did not attribute revolutionary motives to the anti-footbinding movement but rather thought it had come about to save China’s “National Face.” He doubted that it would succeed. In Shanghai, he said, some women still put cotton inside large shoes to conceal their tiny feet and to avoid criticism, secretly wishing that they could revert to the practice. He described rows of beauties in Chungking houses of prostitution: “Their faces and figures were concealed, and the only thing visible to the guest was tiny feet enclosed in shoes of flowered embroidery.” According to Goto, men made the choice of prostitutes on the basis of the lotus feet alone. He concluded his essay by saying that fewer and fewer prostitutes in Peking, Shanghai, and other large cities still bound their feet, but that in villages and especially in parts of Shansi and Szechwan, remote areas distant from centers of civilization, “the feet there are just as small as they were in antiquity.”