Before a marriage was arranged, questions were asked about the size of the prospective bride’s foot. Women seldom went beyond the confines of home and were rarely seen by outsiders. The foot and not the face was used by a prospective suitor as the determinant of a woman’s beauty. (10)
Mrs. Liu (13), the informant who started footbinding last, in 1915, presented a different sequence:
On the wedding day, the groom first looked at the bride’s face, then at her hands to see if they were rough or smooth, and finally at her feet, both front and back.
On Taiwan, ... in the olden days before the Japanese period [prior to 1895], men and women appreciated small feet. It was more important than the face, for it represented wealth, beauty, and nobility. Big feet indicated that the girl was humble, ugly, and poor. (12)
To the male connoisseur, beauty was not merely related to the size of the foot, but to its being properly proportioned in relation to the feminine figure. A five-inch foot was considered more attractive than a smaller one which puffed out and resembled a horse’s hoof or pig’s foot. The tiny, well-bound foot was a rarity, but weird shapes were commonplace. The praiseworthy foot was small, slender, bowed, soft, fragrant, and proportioned, free of swelling and disfiguration.
The concept behind this custom extended beyond the confines of China proper, to be adopted by the Koreans in modified form. A Chinese envoy to Korea in about 1875 allegedly saw women there with bound feet. The toes, however, were not bent under, but were kept uniformly close together. On September 15, 1962, I interviewed a sixty-seven-year-old lady in Seoul concerning foot compression and got the following information. The Korean yangban, or upper-class lady, wore linen socks (called poson) from infancy on, in contrast to wives and daughters of commoners, who often wore rubber shoes and no socks. A somewhat wider poson was also worn by the upper-class male, for his feet were expected to be smaller than those of common laborers. A boy with big feet might be criticized for having “feet as large as a cow thief’s.”
Yangban ladies washed their feet daily, but in a basin different from that used when washing the rest of the body. Servants helped the child until about the age of eight. From then on, as in China, the feet were washed in strictest privacy. Linen socks were worn during the day; before marriage the girl slept barefooted, but married women always wore unlined socks in bed. They were instructed never to expose the feet, even to their husbands. The feet were usually concealed under long skirts.
Koreans pitied bound-foot Chinese, feeling that they were out of balance. The ideal Korean foot was shaped “like a cucumber seed,” narrow, neither short nor long, and without bones protruding from either side. Girls over ten years old might try to make their feet smaller by forcing the second and fourth toes under the middle toe. Our informant, who had done this, also wore extremely tight linen socks in order to produce a smaller effect. Our interview indicates that twentieth-century Korean ladies, while not binding their feet, did compress them in unyielding linen socks. Two toes might be forced under the middle toe but, unlike the Chinese, the toes were never bent under the foot surface and towards the plantar.
E. What was the length, shape, and color of the cloth used in footbinding?
The length of the cloth varied from five to twelve feet, with most informants estimating it at six feet. It was usually about two to three inches wide. (The old Chinese foot measurement was longer than the current one by about two inches.) As for the cloth itself, which might be woven on small hand looms: “the material was a hand-woven white cotton cloth.” (1) “There was no limit as to color and quality.” (4) “The woman might choose any kind of material, though the delicate and soft were best.” (2) “There were two kinds of colored cloth, black and white, with rules as to quality.” (3)
There was one kind of very finely woven and relatively expensive cotton cloth. Most people used ordinary cloth, five feet long. There were people who specialized in selling things needed by women with bound feet, and they knew the regulations for these things. (6)
The reason for also having black cloth was given by Mrs. Ting (10), who explained that the cloth “. . . was usually white, but some village girls and old ladies used black instead. This was because village women were afraid that a white cloth might easily become dirty.” (10) “Women either wove the cloths themselves or purchased them in the market.” (11) “Even the poorest women had two pairs of binding cloths, but well-to-do people had many more than that. During the rainy season, two pairs were insufficient.” (5)
This custom so influenced the Manchus that they too came to prize it, though having tiny feet was officially forbidden. Towards the turn of the century, attempted foot reduction by Manchu women had become commonplace. Manchu girls in their teens did this voluntarily and by themselves, without parental coercion, and tried to achieve a sleek and trim, knifelike effect. The feet were first washed and then bound with a white cloth about three feet long and two inches wide. But, like the Koreans, the toes were not at all bent or broken, for the object was only to make the foot slender and thin, with the toes drawn closely together. After binding, unyielding cloth socks were worn. Great pressure had to be applied to get them on, and so much time was required that one often had to rest midway through. The ladies wbo submitted to this were able to walk without swaying from side to side like the Chinese.
F. What was the relationship between footbinding and age?
Informants agreed that early binding meant less pain and a smaller foot. What was the youngest age? Madam Feng (1) placed it at three, but was contradicted by Madam T’ung, who said that “. . . usually footbinding started at about five or six years of age. Children below five knew nothing and could not endure a little pain.” The age of five was selected because “. . . the child had soft bones and would suffer less pain.” (2) If begun earlier than seven or eight, according to Mrs. Ch’en Shih-ch’ou (5), a person later could not walk without great effort. Mrs. Ch’en Cheng Chien (8) supported her contention that the process must start when one was still a young child by saying:
My sister-in-law was an adopted child. She began the process when she was grown up, so her feet could not be bound small. Her stepmother, not understanding this, beat her over the head so severely with a stick that blood poured from the wound.
Mrs. Wu alleged that if one were too old at the start, the bones of the feet hardened and the foot was not attractive looking. (6) “There was no way to bind a foot small if the process started after one was ten years old.” (9)