Corns were removed by directly applying to them a mixture of salt, vinegar, and overly ripe black plums. There was a special concoction designed to eliminate sores, and a way to make the bones extremely soft at the time of footbinding by applying a poultice. Another healing application consisted of a mixture of buckwheat and water chestnuts. An application of live centipedes and a fragrant hemp oil is also mentioned. Scars were removed by applying an astringent nut which had been ground into a medicinal powder. This was also efficacious for the relief of sore insteps. There were at least several dozen home remedies designed either to soften the feet or to cure different kinds of foot afflictions.
A woman of slight education, I now tell of my sufferings, to cause golden lotus lovers never again to regard women as playthings and to encourage pro-natural foot advocates to be unrelenting in their efforts.
I was born at T’ung District [near Peking] and at the age of two was betrothed to an old friend of the family named Meng. In 1901, I reached the age for footbinding. But just then the Manchu court sent down an order forbidding it. My family had suffered from the Boxer Rebellion and, knowing the inconvenience of tiny feet [in being unable to flee in a time of chaos], they did not intend to have my feet bound. But my fiances family informed my parents through the matchmaker that they disapproved. Mother decided to accommodate them and told me:
Binding a child’s foot creates a lifetime of difficulties. But since this custom is established, I fear that everyone will criticize me if I go against it. You’ll want to be praised and revered, so you must endure the pain of severe binding. A daughter’s pretty legs are achieved through the shedding of tears.
Having finished speaking, she started binding. I was a naturally active child, but with feet bowed my freedom was suddenly lost. Every day I sat immovable by the k’ang; when I heard the call for binding I tried to hide and had to be forcibly detected. Fortunately, my feet were small and achieved the model without requiring a full exertion of force. I also thought that tiny shoes were pretty, but mother told me that I couldn’t wear them yet because my feet were not completely bowed. She reminded me of the saying: “Try for pointedness and slenderness before eleven; after twelve, try for a bowed appearance.”
We shall now force the heel towards the arch, so that the foot is bowed both front and back. After two months of your feeling discomfort in the plantar your foot will be bowed, and you can wear the tiny shoes whose tips touch the ground but have an empty arch in the center.
She later taught me how to balance myself while wearing them.
The binding was so tight that my left arch swelled, while the flesh deteriorated and was filled with pus. Scabs opened from each binding, and an ugly goose-head bump developed. When I was fourteen, father feared that my feet would become so tiny that walking would be seriously hampered and forbade mother to bind them for me any longer. From then on, I bound them myself. When I inspected them under a lamp, they were like two hooks. The flesh was scarred, only the main toe protruded, and the little toes sloped under. How could anyone ignorant of this custom have recognized that it was a human foot?
I married in the spring of 1912, and prior to the wedding made ten pairs of bowed shoes and twenty pairs of flat shoes. [On the wedding day, village mothers-in-law opened the box of the bride’s shoes and let everyone criticize them for craftsmanship or measure them for size.] The wedding guests praised my feet for being tiny and regular, greatly pleasing me. Mother-in-law was so fond of my feet that she ordered servants to do the manual labor. She let me sit with guests and, in order to impress the neighbors, had me change into new bright-colored shoes about once every three weeks. Then I realized that I had not suffered in vain. Even after years of marriage, it is strange to admit but I was ashamed to have my husband witness the daily binding.
After the military uprising of July, 1912, our resources dwindled and our servants scattered. I had to wait on my in-laws and take care of household matters. My legs swelled, and from midnight on I would become feverish. When my husband ordered me to let my feet out, I refused: “My mother never intended to bind my feet and did so only because your family insisted. Now you want me to let them out so that you can use me. I went through this torture once and can’t bear a repetition of it.” But later, I loosened the binding somewhat.
In 1930, a natural-foot society was convened. I was once standing outside my door when a woman foot investigator passed by and encouraged me to let out my feet. I tried to do as directed but, after tottering about for a few steps, discovered that my feet were bleeding. The investigator noticed my difficulty, inspected my feet, and compassionately rubbed the places where the veins had been injured and broken. “My mother forced me to do this when I was an ignorant child. Today I realize that the custom is unsanitary but, with such tiny feet, how can I change?” The investigator taught me another way to let them out which, unfortunately, had no effect. She later revisited, and we became like sisters to one another. This was another strange consequence of the foot emancipation movement.
A selection of tiny shoes
Top: old Shansi style. Center: Northern style. Bottom: Shansi-style silk shoes worn in 1920’s.
In the autumn of my sixth year, mother bought me embossed pointed shoes. She selected the 24th day of the eighth lunar month, which was the birthday of the Tiny-Footed Miss, to start my footbinding. That morning, she gave me water chestnuts and rice dumplings to eat, pleasing me very much. [This was done in the hope that the foot would assume these shapes.] The cloth was eight feet long and three inches wide. It was unusually long because of the above average length of my foot. The first three times, binding was not so tight as to be painful. On the fourth day, mother said that the real binding was to start. Then such pain was felt that I wept, asking that she relent. My toes were bent under and hurt like fire. The pain was unendurable, and that night I opened the bindings, only to be beaten by mother. It hurt all day, but everyone ignored my cries; I didn’t feel like eating during the day and couldn’t sleep at night. In less than a month, the binding cloth had stretched by a foot. The toes from the second to the smallest one were bent in one month’s time.
The most feared and painful thing was the washing of the feet, done once every six or seven days. Opening the binding was comforting at first, but it became discomforting after the toes were bent under. Taking off the binding caused the whole foot to feel numb. Corns were removed, and the old skin was cut away, after which the foot was tightly rebound. I would sit around all day, immovable. A needle-like pain was felt with every step I took, but mother forced me to walk so that the bones could be more easily broken. After three months, every toe but the big one was completely bent under. Shoes worn when binding had first begun now seemed too large. Mother was a northerner, and she inserted bamboo slips in the binding, making it so tight that it had to be rebound only every other day. This added to the pain. Mother was going to place a copper coin on the foot surface, to prevent it from arching too much, but changed her mind.