A Nanking official who had a concubine with slender lotus hooks personally washed her feet nightly. He told his friends: “You gentlemen know how much time I spend in washing Little White’s feet, but you don’t know how often I bend down to smell them. I alternate between washing and smelling, sometimes taking as long as forty-five minutes; and I don’t let the servant re-enter until the water is cold.” When asked about the flavor of the foot, he replied that it was “the greatest flavor of mankind, beyond sweet and sour, un-nameable.” Another official liked to visit prostitutes early in the morning, remove their bindings, and smell the bare feet. This was one of his chief pleasures. Ku Hung-ming shared this craving, and in old age stated that only the tiny foot which could be inserted halfway up the nostrils could be considered beautiful. Some men were offended by an odoriferous foot, but others craved the odor of the flesh or the perspiration. Licking the foot during washing was once called, “Eating Steamed Dumplings in Pure Water.”
Every night I smell her feet, placing the tip of my nose in the deepest recesses of her plantar. I am extremely excited by the smell, which is like no identifiable aroma of perfume. I only regret that I cannot swallow down the white chestnut with one mouthful. But I can still place it in my mouth and chew the plantar. Much of it has already been “swallowed”; the use of my tongue is, naturally, subsidiary.
A writer revealed that the plantar and tiny toes of his beloved were the most sensitive parts of her body. Because she was more responsive barefooted than when wearing shoes, rubbing the shoe required greater effort on his part. First he held the tip of the shoe in one hand, and rubbed heel, arch, and sole with the other. Then he inserted one finger inside the shoe and rubbed with it. Finally he massaged the whole shoe area vigorously and methodically. He not only rubbed the bare foot, but smelled, licked, and sucked it. He first rubbed the flesh near the tiny toes, then the arch, big toe, heel, and area under the heel. Both greatly enjoyed his playing between the toes and his rubbing the toes one after the other. One man of wealth never had relations with a prostitute, but insisted instead on smelling the foot and removing dirt between the toes and in the plantar with his fingernails. He was careful to remove every speck, made a tablet out of it with his hands, and swallowed it as if it were a delicious tidbit. There were others like him who lost interest if the foot were either cleansed or perfumed.
The odoriferous foot may have substituted for smelling salts in helping one to revive. There was an early-twentieth-century newspaper report about a man in Ch’ang-ch’un who suffered from epileptic fits. Whenever he was about to lose consciousness, his wife restored him to normal by hurriedly removing the bindings and placing her bare feet over his face. This technique always succeeded. He was once in town, felt convulsions coming on, and staved off insensibility by having a prostitute in the street remove her bindings and let him smell the bared flesh. One woman delighted in urging her feminine boudoir companions to use their tiny feet in place of the male member, and was not satisfied unless she changed partners seven or eight times in the course of the evening. There were also women who liked to fondle the male member with their tiny feet. When intoxicated, they would remove the bindings, place the organ between their feet, and rub it back and forth until the aroused male scattered his sperm about in profusion. This delighted the woman. One commentator believed that the sole of the foot may have been so extremely ticklish that this rubbing sensation gave it relief. “Touching of the genital organs by the tiny feet provokes in the male thrills of an indescribable voluptuousness. And the great lovers know that in order to awaken the ardor, far too cold, of their old clients, to take the rod between their two feet is worth more than all the aphrodysiacs of the Chinese pharmacopeia and kitchen. . . .”
Footbinding also appealed to the male whose main interest in sexual relations was to inflict punishment on the woman. A love of woman reduced to a piteous state was a perversity, like the chewing of flesh, burning it, or beating someone with a whip. A stepmother or aunt in binding the child’s foot was usually much harsher than the natural mother would have been. An old man was described who delighted in seeing his daughters weep as the binding was tightly applied. In an age of male dominance, the master of a household of concubines could give unlimited rein to sadistic impulse. In one household, everyone had to bind. The main wife and concubines bound to the smallest degree, once morning and evening, and once before retiring. The husband and first wife strictly carried out foot inspections and whipped those guilty of having let the binding become loose. The sleeping shoes were so painfully small that the women had to ask the master to rub them in order to bring relief. Another rich man would flog his concubines on their tiny feet, one after another, until the blood flowed.
One writer stated that he was in a bandit area in east Kiangsi, about 1931, where bound-foot women unable to flee had been taken captive. The bandits, angered because of their captives’ weak way of walking and inability to keep in file, forced the women to remove bindings and socks and run about barefoot. They cried out in pain and were unable to move on in spite of beatings. Each of the bandits grabbed a woman and forced her to dance about on a wide field covered with sharp rocks. The flesh was broken open, and the field was stained with their blood. Although the women requested death in preference, the bandits sang, danced, and refused to let up in the slightest. The harshest treatment was meted out to prostitutes. Nails were driven through their hands and feet; they cried aloud for several days before expiring. One form of torture was to tie up a woman so that her legs dangled in mid-air and place bricks around each toe, increasing the weight until the toes straightened out and eventually dropped off. One woman lost two toes in this way before her relatives finally ransomed her life with gold. In 1900, Russian troops were accused of committing atrocities against women in areas which they crossed along the Pei-ning Railroad. They violated women and then strung the tiny shoes around their necks as a source of amusement. Villages near the Yellow River region during chaotic civil conditions in 1933 suffered far worse atrocities. Tiny-footed women had their bindings forcibly removed; some were stripped naked and used as human tables of flesh on which mahjong was played and wine was drunk.
The rationale in favor of footbinding survived the centuries and is still echoed occasionally today by the older male generation. Chinese college professors and intellectuals of note on Taiwan informed me in 1961 that Ta-t’ung ladies during the bound-foot era had layer upon layer of fleshy folds within the vagina, and cited a saying about “gates and doors, one after another.” Footbinding survived countless centuries in China and was toppled only by revolution; it had snob appeal as a mark of gentility and evoked an instant sexual response during an age in which women were spiritually as well as physically bound, regarded mainly as male possessions and playthings. As scholars have pointed out, the claim of influence on the sexual organs was scientifically invalid, but nevertheless Chinese men believed in and spread stories from one generation to the next about the delights of caressing the bound foot and its wondrous effects on the feminine form; this was instrumental in ensuring its perpetuity.