I attended a birthday celebration for my grandfather in the following year. One of my cousins there had tiny feet under three inches, which prompted mother to insist that I get mine reduced to the same diminutive and lovely size. After that, the pain was increased. Mother was friendly with a tiny-footed widow named Lu and asked Mrs. Lu’s mother to come to our home and bind my feet. The widow’s mother was so skilled that the binding tightened with every step and lasted three or four days. I suffered severely, but under coercion from my mother dared not disobey. By the time the old woman died, more than a year later, my feet were narrow, pointed, less than a handful, and slightly over three inches. They were beautiful, but, oh, how I suffered! I began to bind them myself at thirteen; by then only tight binding made me feel comfortable and facilitated my walking.
At the start of the Republic, I went to study at a certain girls’ school. One of the courses was physical education, but my tiny feet prevented me from enrolling. My teachers told me that in keeping with the new spirit of the Republic I should let out my feet. But I declined, feeling that this would be useless since the bones were already broken. Schoolmates made fun of me, and one of them cruelly stepped on my feet, hurting me like a knife thrust. Though I wanted to fight back, I was too weak. After I married, my husband felt that everyone would laugh at me because my tiny feet were inconsonant with the times. To avoid ridicule, he wouldn’t let me attend banquets or go on trips with him, so our relationship became extremely superficial. My happiness in life was entirely destroyed by having tiny feet. It is unlucky to be born a girl, but much worse to have to destroy one’s limbs so that one’s freedom is completely lost and even walking becomes a great problem. How incomparable and indescribable was the pain.
The Record of Gathering Radishes has many poems but relatively few records of fact. But the revelations by Miss A-hsiu can be said to rouse a person from his folly. My wife also went through this experience. I wish to write of her sufferings and draw out the reader’s sentiments.
My wife was born in the Ting District of Hopei Province. In keeping with custom, her feet were bound at the age of seven. Time has blurred much of her remembrance, but two incidents remain vivid to the present day. Her binding was once sewn together to make it even tighter, and she suddenly felt sharp pain along the tip of her foot, much greater than usual. She begged her mother to loosen the binding for relief, only to be told that tight binding was essential to achieve an elegant form. My wife put on her shoes as ordered, but the moment she walked on them a dart-like pain pierced her flesh. She secretly removed the binding in another room and saw that the needle used to fasten the cloth had been sewn into and through her flesh, so that the left side of her big toe was pinioned to the cloth. The binding had been so tight that bleeding was not yet visible. Her mother blamed herself for carelessness while the daughter wept.
By the age of fourteen her feet were tiny as bamboo shoots, and she had long since done the binding unaided. One day, her mother said to her: “A tiny foot should be slender, small, pointed, and proportioned. Your feet really have a major defect, because the insteps are out of proportion.” My wife was determined to rectify this. She placed the soles of her feet opposite one another, sitting cross-legged, and pressed stones down on each foot. These stones ordinarily were used for beating clothing, and the pressure caused unbearable pain. After an hour, the area below her knees became completely numb. Upon completion, the swollen insteps were bound with an especially narrow cloth. Her insteps straightened out in two months, and heel and toe became much more uniform.
We married when my wife was eighteen; the shoes she wore measured 3.4 inches. Her heels were straight and even, with no puffing up of the instep. My mother and our neighbors often admired their beauty. I was from an average family, where daughters-in-law had to draw water from the well and pound the mortar. My wife, with tiny and weak feet, couldn’t stand the heavy labor. Whenever foot infections caused her to have to sweep the floors on her knees, [as a type of soothing ointment] I placed bean curd peelings or vegetable leaves on her foot bindings. At such times, I couldn’t help thinking of how evil and injurious this custom was; suddenly my fondness for the golden lotus came to an end.
With the success of the northern expedition, foot emancipation societies sprang up everywhere. Foot investigators came to our home several times, exhorting emancipation. My wife tried to comply, but, after thirty years of tight binding, she found that walking without bandages meant pressure with every step on the four smaller toes, curled until then inside the underpart of the foot. Severe pain was also felt along the deep crease of the sole. Two weeks of trial resulted in a puffed instep and no improvement. I saw how weak and swollen her legs were and ordered her to rebind in order to restore the previous tiny-footed normalcy.
Hereafter, I request of foot investigation personnel that they act with severity toward young girls but with leniency toward middle-aged ladies, so as to avoid a repetition of earlier suffering.
Women with bound feet now must suffer the discomfort of letting them out. But few pay attention to this. I am a fairly-well educated woman who incurred a deep spiritual and physical affliction from footbinding. My desire for foot emancipation was natural, but since the bones were broken and could never be restored, I had to revert to binding because of the hindrances involved in doing otherwise. But who would have thought that a four-foot strip of binding cloth would cause me to be persecuted everywhere I went.
A few years ago, my husband and I went to live in Kaifeng. Authorities were then using foot bindings to measure the achievements of district chiefs. In other words, the responsible officials were expected to turn in binding cloths each month to prove they were getting results. A joke circulated about the district chief who, in order to comply with orders from above, bought new cloths and exchanged them for old ones with the people under his jurisdiction. Police were generally delighted to comply with these instructions, since it gave them a chance to lewdly amuse themselves. I was walking on the street one day when I suffered the great shame of having my bindings forcibly removed. The next day, I escaped to the home of my uncle in a certain city in eastern Shantung and lived there in idleness for one year. But, with the issuance of another order of prohibition there, enforced foot emancipation increased with every passing day. I was frightened, but fortunately just then my husband had to leave town on business. Again I made good my escape; this time to Shanghai, where I live peacefully to the present day. Almost every woman in Shanghai now has natural feet, and the few who do not move about unnoticed. Someone criticized me in these words: “You let out your feet but then rebound them, a sign of extreme obstinacy. It is your own fault that someone tampered with you [in forcibly removing the bindings].” I replied that there were many reasons other than preference which forced me to rebind.