These propaganda campaigns enjoyed their swiftest success in the cities, but they encountered stubborn resistance in the interior. To reinforce the campaign of peaceful persuasion, Mr. Teng decreed in 1927 that recalcitrant footbinders would suffer these monetary fines:
Over forty, two silver dollars; over twenty but less than forty, five silver dollars; under twenty, ten silver dollars.
This order weakened village resistance. A large Befriend the People Gathering was convened in November, 1927, at the Civil Affairs Office. Footbindings of every conceivable variety were exhibited along two corridors, like scarves in a department store. There were also several-hundred tiny red shoes on view, and foot emancipation signs were displayed inside the buildings. Mr. Teng ascended the stage and gave an amusing talk, smelling a pair of tiny shoes in his hand and pretending that this made him nauseous. When a few tiny-footed young ladies entered, he escorted them to the stage and, after friendly persuasion, removed their bindings. As a climax to the performance, he had his wife go up to the stage and show the interested crowd that her feet were natural-sized. Mr. Teng was also active in Honan, where he gave a reward of five silver dollars to anyone who brought in a hundred bindings. This produced excellent results; over 25,000 bindings were confiscated in less than a month.
A meeting at Hankow in Hupeh Province was held on April 19, 1927, open only to Kuomintang women party members whose feet were natural or had been let out. A larger meeting in Chekiang that year had as a secondary motive unbinding of the breasts, which customarily were tightly bound so as not to protrude. More than a thousand women attended and were lectured to on the theme, “Not letting out the feet means that one is willing to be a man’s plaything.” After Feng Yu-hsiang occupied Honan, he directed that family members of his armed forces lead in abolishing footbinding; this had an immediate effect. A county chief in Kiangsi buried a huge collection of bindings and erected a monument inscribed with the words: “Tomb of Tiny-Foot Bindings.” When school children gave a propaganda play at Lanchow in Kansu Province, a woman who had lost three toes through binding was paraded through the streets by her in-laws, with her tale of woe written out for all to see. One district in Hopei issued two thousand badges to elementary school boys who would join a Society Against Marriage to Bound-Foot Women and make a written pledge to that effect. The badge was worn as a mark of distinction.There were specific instructions for letting out the feet:
1. When you make shoes to fit the foot which has been let out, the size should be one-half or one inch longer than usual. If you feel upon wearing it that the tip is too wide, stuff it with cotton. As the foot gradually gets larger, decrease the amount of cotton until eventually it is no longer needed.
2. Make a short binding cloth, one to two feet long. Bind the foot to a lesser extent, to let it gradually become more relaxed, but do not on any account suddenly eliminate use of the binding cloth. This will cause the blood to flow so violently that pain and swelling will result.
3. Wash the foot nightly in hot water, adding a little vinegar to the water.
4. Stuff cotton between the toes, allowing them gradually to expand outwards.
5. When you go to sleep, you must remove binding cloth and stockings to allow the blood to circulate. Upon getting up in the morning, bind the foot loosely. When swelling or pain are no longer felt, remove the binding cloth completely.
6. If you follow the above method, you can let out the feet in one month’s time.
Women with bound feet who lived during the transitional era suffered twofold. They endured the pain and discomfort of binding in tender childhood, only to be told in maturity that their sufferings had been in vain because of the demands of the Revolution and the change in aesthetic viewpoint. The difficult position in which they found themselves is illustrated by the following incident which took place in a Shantung village. The county chief led two girls with the tiniest feet in the county to the public hall, wishing to force them to let out their feet as an example to other recalcitrants. Before the audience, each held up a dried twist of dough and explained:
We brought these along because the county chief wants to compel us to let out our feet. Let him carefully look at these spiral shapes, already tight and dried out, sour and brittle. If he can restore them to their original prefried shape without breakage or damage, we will immediately comply with the order.
The county chief, at a loss for words, finally excused them.
The tiny-footed came to be looked down upon and were made to feel ashamed. One city forbade them to appear in public places; another prohibited their walking in the streets; still another sent police to search them out and strip off the bindings. Fukienese officials at Changchow encouraged the local citizenry to whip the feet of any tiny-footed woman seen in public. In certain places, failure to exercise moderation led to such excesses that women committed suicide rather than face the shame of exposure or impoverish their parents by forcing them to pay heavy fines. Some officials stressed foot emancipation because it was easily enforced against defenseless women and gave them and their subordinates a chance to increase income through levying fines, as well as to amuse themselves lewdly in the process. Many liberal thinkers of the time opposed the tendency to rely on monetary fines and punishment. “Use peaceful means to change this custom. Once the peasants understand its evils, they will change of their own accord.”
Wives who had formerly bound their feet now found themselves deserted or divorced. They had been forced into binding by their mothers to enhance their marital prospects, but the result was the reverse. When women heard of wives being rejected because of tiny feet, they tried everything to make the foot revert to normal size. To accelerate the process they would soak their feet in cold water nightly, suffering as much as in early childhood. No matter how hard they tried, there was really no way to keep up with the changing times. Women who had let out their feet in middle age could be seen plodding through the streets in visible discomfort. Footbinding was dictated by male preference and submitted to because the male view of aesthetics demanded it. Women who were born in the traditional age but reached maturity during or after the Revolution were the tragic figures of the period. Some recorded their experiences in the nineteen-thirties, at a time when memories were still fresh and events were vividly recalled. The motive may have been to further the cause of emancipation; whatever it was, the accounts which follow have a ring of truth to them and obviously were the result of firsthand experience. Most of the following accounts appeared in the daily press as letter-confessions, so some writers were familiar with the contents of earlier essays.
Because literary men adored the lotus hooks as a plaything, we, the innocents, suffered this punishment. I am therefore not embarrassed to reveal my experiences in order to awaken lotus-loving gentlemen. I was a lively child who studied at home and liked to jump about and play. Toward the end of Manchu rule, when footbinding was still elevated, I was seven years old. Mother told our wet nurse to start my binding, and I informed my sisters that from the next day on my feet would be prettier than any of theirs. The wet nurse softened up my feet in a basin of water before binding them. She dressed me in new shoes and stockings and ordered me to walk, but I wept aloud from the pain in my toes. I begged mother to let out the binding, but she replied that it would have to be endured because only through it could I achieve the elegant lotus steps. She cautioned me that otherwise my feet would become foot-long lotus boats and prevent me from getting married. After school was recessed, I wanted to join my brothers and sisters in play, but my feet were immovable. From this time on, I lost my former activeness and spent restless and pain-filled nights. And the wet nurse rebound my feet when I awoke. It took a month for my toes to get tightly joined together and three to five months for them to press inwardly toward the plantar. The binding became tighter and the discomfort more acute.