This happened more than ten years ago, but younger sister sighs grievously every time she thinks of it. Mother and my other two sisters had natural feet, so only she suffered this poison. It must have been her fate. Looking at it this way, footbinding was a product of the social environment; it is a distortion of fact to say that women did this to please their husbands.
I now write about a mature woman who was insulted by her husband and mother-in-law because her feet were irregular. A certain family had three sons. The eldest son’s wife had perfectly proportioned tiny feet. When the next son was ready to wed, emphasis was placed on the golden lotuses of the prospective bride. By 1915, maidens in Peking with tiny feet were becoming scarcer with each passing day. This scarcity delayed the marriage. The second son finally took a bound-foot bride from an outside district. On the wedding day, everyone scrutinized her as she walked with her buttocks swaying back and forth, and in general agreed that she must have false articles beneath her skirts.
Her husband heard this rumor and on the wedding night discovered that her feet were actually larger than her shoes. Moreover, they were plump and too large to be grasped in the hand. Dismayed by the deception, the groom retired. The bride realized how he felt and wept by the side of the bed as she confessed:
I was orphaned in childhood, and my stepmother falsely consented to continue the old customs. But by the time I was promised in matrimony only this half-foot-long lotus had been produced. How could I bear to renounce your marriage proposal because of my lower extremities?
The groom was moved by her candidness and accepted the situation, advising her only to exercise the utmost care in concealing the truth. She made the heel higher than usual, to give the illusion of smallness, and used an iron heel instead of the usual bamboo one to give her firmer support. She stood and walked with apparent difficulty, clinging to walls for assistance. But once, when walking on a rough road, her foot came out of the shoe. Bystanders saw this and made a laughing matter of it. Her mother-in-law felt that she had disgraced the family name and asked her why her feet seemed as large as a maid servant’s. “What face do you have? Take off your shoes and let me see how you bind.” She did as she was told, removing the bindings. The old lady saw that her ankle was crooked, and that the five-inch sole was flat. The second toe bent under the big toe and the other three under the sole, towards the plantar. Her foot was completely off standard. The more she looked, the more she frowned. The chagrined bride, daily ridiculed by everyone, determinedly said to her mother-in-law: “I’m willing to endure any suffering if only you can force my foot to become smaller.” This remark pleased the old lady, and she ordered her to wear cotton cloth shoes with firm and unyielding sides and soles. The sole was gradually transformed into a bowed shape. Then the cotton cloth was discarded in favor of a stronger and less flexible type of Peking cloth. Her mother-in-law supervised the binding day and night. She beat on the crooked heel with a pipe bowl to straighten it out. She forbade the girl to wear padded cotton shoes, even in the dead of winter, and only let her wrap the tip of the foot with cotton [as protection against the cold]. To curve the plantar, only bowed wooden soles were selected. In a few months, there was progress towards better proportion, with heels level and the plantar curved. She once caught a feverish cold and removed the bindings, but her mother-in-law so scolded her for doing this that she cried all night and almost killed herself by drinking kerosene from a table lamp. The suicide attempt made the old lady more understanding. After her death the daughter-in-law refused to let the feet out, because she had already suffered twice to achieve the tiny model. Unlike everyone else, her second toe is not bent under but extends under the big toe. If it could be photographed, it would make a rare view.
I was born in the south, at the end of the Manchu dynasty. My mother started the binding when I was just seven years old. I was used to freedom and wept, but mother did not pity me in the slightest. On the contrary, she said: “No matter how it hurts, I forbid you to loosen the binding.” I was formerly very active, but became as dull as a wooden chicken and tearfully endured my suffering. Every few days the binding was redone, tighter than before. Sometimes I covertly loosened it, but if mother found out she reviled me and made it even tighter. After a few months, the toes bent inwards. In hot weather I suffered from intermittent fevers and stomach pains. There was a putrid odor every time the binding was unraveled. To cure this, before binding, my feet were washed in a water mixed with pungent wild peppers; alum was also placed on the foot surface and between the toes. Alum reduced perspiration and killed the odor; after that, I always used it. My feet achieved the model shape in three years, a little over four inches long. Only the big toe protruded; the others were bent in towards the plantar and were tightly bunched together like so many superfluous warts. The surface was slightly humped and had several corns on it from the peeling of the flesh. My feet were so weak that I had to lean on walls for support in walking, tottering as if I were about to fall. I married at fifteen, and from then on bound by myself. I was most ashamed to let others see me do this, because of the weird and most unaesthetic appearance of the bare feet. Ten years ago, when the emancipation movement arose, I entered school to study. Family members encouraged me to let my feet out. This I did gradually, feeling that the bones were soft and the veins loose. Every night I washed the feet in warm water; gradually I cut the cloth shorter. After three years, while my feet had become somewhat plumper, the toes were still bent under and had failed to stretch out. So when I entered school, fearing that classmates would laugh at me, I stuffed cotton in my socks [in the place where the toes should be] and pretended that I had natural feet. Though I walked rather slowly, no one realized why.
Two years ago, my wife hired a maid servant named Chang. She had twin hooks under her skirt, slender and not enough to grasp in one’s hand. This is what Tun-fang yu-chi meant in saying that they could be placed in a glass; such words were true. Though the maid was middle-aged, she still had an air of elegance about her. But she walked in a rather forlorn manner and could barely fulfill household tasks. My wife encouraged her to let her feet out, but this so increased her pain that she decided against it. She was of a gentle nature, and our family greatly enjoyed conversing with her. My wife was especially fond of her and always rendered a helping hand. One day, the maid unexpectedly spoke in great detail about footbinding experiences: