There were various customs and superstitious beliefs associated with footbinding; these were coordinated with auspicious or festival days in the lunar calendar. According to Taoist belief, an auspicious day was one in which male and female elements in the universe were harmonious, creating the possibility for felicitous activity in the heavens. On national holidays such as the New Year and during plays or temple festivals, women would go about in groups and wear lovely bowed shoes. One superstition associated the number five propitiously with the start of footbinding. The folk explanation was that the word “five” sounded identical to a word meaning “to stop” (the foot from getting larger). Sometimes a five-year-old nominally started on New Year’s Eve, which was also called the Fifth Night-Watch, but did not really tightly bind the feet until spring. Propitious days for starting footbinding were recorded in various books which were consulted by the girl’s family. An old lady who had enjoyed good fortune might be asked to give the first turn of the binding, or a shepherd or woodcutter might do this instead, signifying that the girl could later move about with agility. The young girl might bite the tip of a writing brush or grasp a water chestnut, both symbolizing a hope that the foot might become thin and pointed. She might burn incense and kneel in worship, either on her birthday or on an auspicious festival day. An old lady of good omen might pray before the Kitchen God, after which necessary objects such as bindings and shoes would be placed in a kitchen basin. These would include a knife, signifying that the bones of the foot were to be diminutively reduced.
Village girls sometimes began binding about the middle of the seventh lunar month, when the Hemp and Corn Festival was held, in the hope that the foot might achieve the slenderness of a stalk of hemp. The most frequent starting day was the twenty-fourth day of the eighth lunar month, in celebration of the birth of a goddess appropriately called The Little-Footed Miss. On this day, the protection of the Kitchen God or the goddess Kuanyin was also sought. Dumplings made from cooked grain and red beans were eaten by the girl so that her foot might become as soft and as small as a dumpling.
Before starting the binding, some mothers made an elegant pair of tiny shoes. These were taken to an altar before Kuanyin and placed directly above the incense burner so that it looked as if they had come down from Heaven. Incense was burned daily, and prayers were offered up that the foot about to be bound might assume as beautiful a shape as the newly-made shoe. On the first day, mother and daughter might pray to Kuanyin that the child’s foot be painlessly and beautifully bound. The holding of this festival in the eighth lunar month coincided with the advent of cooler weather in late September or early October, consequently reducing perspiration and odor and allowing the necessary initial attention to be devoted to binding after the harvest. Sometimes footbinding began on Kuanyin’s birthday, the nineteenth day of the second lunar month. In some regions it started exactly four months later, on the day that the goddess attained enlightenment. There was also a custom of praying to Kuanyin for nineteen days prior to her birthday; these practices varied by area and were not universally observed.
Footbinding was a prerequisite to a proper marriage, and the golden lotus received its due share of attention. The shoes to be worn by the tiny-footed bride were handmade and embroidered with good luck wedding sayings such as “Harmonious for a Hundred Years,” “Wealth and Eminence Until Our Hair Turns White.” In the north, such bridal shoes were called “Good Fortune”; in the south, they were called “Stepping into the [Bridegroom’s] Hall.” Such shoes were considered good luck omens; after the wedding they might be removed and secretly stored away. They were worn again for the celebration when a baby boy became one month old. The shoes were supposed to alleviate foot pain. Sick women often requested them from a bride, because the wearing of three pairs was considered a cure for consumption. The bride’s dowry might include four pairs of brocade shoes, for this word had the same sound as one meaning that everything would be perfectly achieved.
On the last night before her wedding, the southern Fukienese maiden placed two cooked eggs in a basin of heated water. She then removed the bindings and washed her feet in the water. After washing, she took out the “Feet Washing Eggs” and brought them to the home of the groom. There she boiled them in sugar and presented them to him. When her husband got into bed first on the wedding night, the bride secretly put her bound feet into his shoes. According to one observer, she did this to intimidate him.
The Chinese for more than a millennium have enjoyed a custom of having relatives and friends play pranks on bride and groom on their wedding night. Still practiced today in modified form, this is appropriately called “Disturbing the Bedroom. One popular Shansi game on the wedding night consisted of turning over four to eight wine glasses and placing them in a straight line, about three inches apart. The name of the game was “Turning Over The Glass,” which the bride had to do with the tip of her toe. Another game was called “Crossing the Bridge.” There were two lines of parallel glasses, with a chop-stick placed across each pair. The paired glasses were about three to four inches apart, and the bride had to walk between the pairs without breaking the “bridge.” If she knocked down the bridge because her feet were too large, everyone laughed at her. Peking guests on this night might play with the bride’s shoes and even grab at her tiny feet. She had to allow this, displeased as she was, for only then would they finally desist. It was a village custom to stand quietly outside the bedroom window on the wedding night, hearing and remembering every sound made by the nuptial pair. These were then mimicked on the following day as a form of rustic amusement.
Tiny-foot beauty contests were popularly held during Buddhist temple festivals in both north and south. There, women usually confined to the home enjoyed moments of freedom. The large-footed wife concealed herself from view, feeling a social embarrassment which the unhappy husband shared. Those with feet small but substandard in shapeliness might decline on the pretext of illness, only to be found out by relatives and laughed at for having lacked the necessary competitive qualifications. The contests were not held specifically for that purpose alone, but were rather part of the over-all celebrations observed during regular festival days.
The most famous of the many contests was the Assemblage of Foot Viewing held yearly at Ta-t’ung in Shansi on the sixth day of the sixth lunar month. A custom of sunning armor (liang-chia) on this day was observed during the Manchu dynasty, and the theory was advanced that this practice gradually came to an end and was replaced by one of tiny-footed women assembling at the temples in large numbers. People who still partially remembered the name came to associate it with the foot festival and called this “sunning the feet” (liang-chiao) instead.
A person who had twice seen the tiny-foot festival in Ta-t’ung supplied the following information. He witnessed it when north China was controlled by Feng Yu-hsiang and also after the Japanese occupied Ta-t’ung. He said that it was held on a back-street which was probably once especially reserved for that purpose. These meetings may have been originally organized to exhibit prospective candidates for the imperial harem, since Ming emperors would select concubines from among young ladies whose feet were tiny and perfectly proportioned. He believed that the principal purpose of the showing was not competitive, but was rather to give everyone a chance to comment on and appreciate the diminutive sizes and proportioned shapes. The first time he attended, an old lady over sixty years old was awarded first prize from among five or six hundred participants, having feet less than three inches long. The ladies sat on small benches with legs extended, in some instances unraveling the bindings for the benefit of the onlookers who came into the city from all directions. Ta-t’ung maintained its enthusiasm for bound feet at a time when the rest of the nation was abandoning the custom, and to such an extent that even Feng Yu-hsiang was ridiculed in doggerel verse for being an advocate of the natural-foot movement.