Today there are many women over sixty years old who still bind their feet. Those over fifty often seem to have had their feet bound in earlier days but to have unbound them later. It is seldom that a woman under fifty has had her feet bound. It seems that more mainlanders than Taiwanese had their feet bound. (12)
Footbinding generally prevailed, but it differed in intensity from province to province. Sometimes within a single province, natural and bound-foot areas existed side by side. The natural foot predominated in such southern provinces as Fukien, Kwang-tung and Kwangsi. After the Revolution, the last strongholds for this custom were the areas around the Yellow River, followed by the Yangtze and Pearl River regions in that order. Northern cities in Hopei, Honan, and Shantung followed the trend towards modernization, but the majority of villagers retained their foot-binding habit in the face of change. The direction of the abolition movement was generally from south to north, dependent on the facility of communications, with inaccessible northern villages being the most conservative. The upper classes bound the feet carefully and to a diminutive degree, but the attention devoted to tight and rigorous binding tended to decline as one moved down the social scale.
Adele Fielde, a missionary observer in Swatow who spoke the local dialect and lived there from 1877 to 1887, mentioned that the rich bound their daughters’ feet at six or eight years, but that the poor did not start until the girl was thirteen or fourteen. She noted that only the very rich could afford to have their feet bound so tiny as to completely incapacitate themselves for labor of any kind, and that even middle-class bound-foot women sometimes had to walk four or five miles daily. There were some village girls who had their feet slightly bound just before marriage and unbound them soon after the wedding festivities ended. There were also natural-footed women who, on approaching a town or on a festival day, would make an effort to simulate the tiny-footed style. In Miss Fielde’s time, before the anti-footbinding movement gathered momentum, the women were as insistent as the men on the preservation of this custom.
For a Chinese woman the greatest sorrow is that of having no sons; the next to the greatest is that of being unlike her neighbors. The smallest feet are made by those who determine to be elegant at any cost, and these draw their own foot-ligatures tighter than anyone else would draw them.
John F. Davis, writing a half-century earlier, penetratingly observed that the idea behind footbinding seemed to be exemption from labor, and that “as small feet make cripples of the women, it is fair to conclude that the idea of gentility which they convey is from a similar association.”
The fact that total incapacitation through binding was a luxury enjoyed only by the wealthy class would seem to substantiate Veblen’s theory that one rationale behind footbinding was to demonstrate the pecuniary reputability of the male owner by showing that his woman was useless, expensive, and had to be supported in idleness. In a footbound state, she was consequently valuable as evidence of the owner’s pecuniary strength. Veblen went on to say that the constricted waist and bound foot were repulsive to the untrained sense, but unquestionably attractive to men “into whose scheme of life they fit as honorific items sanctioned by the requirements of pecuniary reputability.” Women willingly altered their persons to conform as nearly as possible to the instructed taste of their time, and the mutilation served its purpose by proving physical disability and by decreasing the visible efficiency of the individual.
N. How did this practice end?
The question referred to the situation either on the mainland or on Taiwan, depending on where the woman was at the time. First, citing the testimony of the mainlanders: “After the Republic began, people didn’t bind their feet, and those who had done so began to let them out to develop naturally.” (2)
Everybody was letting their feet out, so I did the same. City people were the first to respond to this reform. Country people were comparatively bigoted, but they too gradually followed the example set in the cities. (4)
In the thirty-second year of Kuang-hsu [1906], the Manchu government sent down an order that the feet were to be unbound. Those who refused would have both legs cut off. I therefore let them out, but later there was further foot growth. If I had kept binding them, I could today wear three-inch embroidered shoes without difficulty. (I)
When Mrs. T’ung (4) was asked how her feet were let out, she replied that
... by untying the bandage, the process was completed once and for all. After that, thick socks made of a doubly folded material were worn, instead of the binding cloth. At first my feet did not feel accustomed to walking, but this feeling was overcome after two or three years. After letting my feet out, they grew much longer.
The way in which the Japanese abolished footbinding was described in detaiclass="underline"
After the Japanese occupied Taiwan, they forced the women to untie their bindings and forbade young girls to start to have their feet bound. Women with bound feet did not like to remove the bindings, however, for if they did they could not walk. There was also the belief current that if a woman unbound her feet, it was because she was being punished for having done some terrible thing like having had intercourse with someone other than her husband. (12)
The Japanese felt that both footbinding and pigtails were unsanitary and that the foot’s freedom of movement was restricted. Therefore, soon after they occupied Taiwan, though I forget which year it was, they sent down a strict order that feet be let out and pigtails cut off. The Japanese had a spirit for accomplishing anything they wanted. If someone didn’t let her feet out, they would force her to and say that they would immerse her feet in a liquid medicine. [Perhaps a reference to a concoction for causing the bones to stretch out.] Therefore, though people felt it a pity to give up bound feet, they had to let them out. When the foot was let out, it was immersed in urine, for in this way the foot did not feel too painful. [But she referred to feet in general and not to her own feet in this way.] After the foot was let out, a white cloth was still wrapped around it, for otherwise the sole of the foot would feel painful and even bleed when one walked on it. (11)
The Japanese said that if they found someone who hadn’t let her feet out, she would have to do this in front of everyone. . . . Some women did not obey, however, so even today there are a few left with bound feet. Letting out the feet was more painful than having bound feet. It had to be done very slowly, for otherwise the foot felt so painful that one couldn’t walk. When the foot was let out, the area between the toes and the heel of the foot bled easily. Walking was about the same for me before and after I let out my feet. (10)
The Japanese strongly called on all women to let out their feet and also made it definite that men had to cut off their pigtails. I didn’t want to let out my feet. The Japanese beat me so severely with a stick that finally I had no other recourse. That is why my feet now are much larger than they used to be. I didn’t want to let my feet out, for no one regarded such feet as good-looking. But the Japanese beat me very painfully, so I had to. . . . They finally saw that I had let my feet out and didn’t come around anymore. I was very happy about this and therefore secretly bound them again. But I did not dare to go outside for fear that the Japanese would discover this. (6)