When I was a girl in China....

Lu Zhen-lan

"Our village is poor and very far from any city, but footbinding was still a very strict custom in this area. Everyone did it. Before Mao came to power I used to hear that there were one or two women who never bound their feet, but I never actually saw any. Now in my village only women who are over 68 or so have tiny feet.

I was ten when I started binding. My mother told me that I had to in order to marry. It's a very simple process, really. You just use a strip of cloth one "mi" in length (about one meter) and wrap the feet so that all four toes are turned under. Then you wrap the cloth around the heel ... the important thing to remember is to bind as tightly as you possibly can. then slowly make it tighter and tighter. You wear gradually smaller and smaller shoes, every time stuffing them into each new pair. It hurts a lot! And there is no way to stop the pain except by loosening or removing the bindings.

When my feet hurt, no matter what I was doing, I would just undo the bindings and throw them away! Since I was the only daughter that lived to binding age, my parents indulged me. They didn't force me to bind tightly, and they didn't beat me or yell at me when I took off the binding cloths. If I complained that the pain was too much they would loosen the bindings for me. Each time they were loosened or removed my feet would expand and start to lose their shape. This is why my feet are not very small. Most women here have three-inch feet.

After about two years of binding the pain finally stopped. The toes were broken and sufficiently turned under by then, so I didn"t worry so much about the length any more. I learned to wash my feet every two or three days and rebind on my own. Before that, mother had always done it for me. Washing the feet is always something one does in complete privacy, and as I grew older I became more modest about it ... always handling my feet only when I was alone. Washing and rebinding is not something others should see. I am happy to tell you about myself and footbinding, but you may not write about me or take a picture if you plan to publish them in a pornographic magazine.

After the pain from binding stopped, I never gave it much thought. Where I'm from children don't work in the fields until they are 15, because before that age children are just not able to understand about work. So I didn't have to work on my feet for many years. I just played around the house and didn't go very far. Now I walk as far as I want and work in the fields every day, just like all the other women here. I got married when I was 24 or 25. We were very poor so I married late. I don't think that the size of my feet made a lot of difference in who I married - we were poor and I didn't have very small feet, so the matchmaker and my parents handled it. We didn't require much in the way of a wedding dowry - just a simple cabinet with a set of bedding and your clothes. The groom, however, had to give the bride two mi of cloth for binding her feet, and two pairs of shoes.

I've always worn this same type of shoe. We like to wear red ones the best. but you can only wear them if your feet are really small ... otherwise you must wear black ones. When a woman reaches her mid-thirties she must also begin wearing black. Of course we always make all our own shoes - you can't buy them. We do embroidery on them, too, just as we do on our clothing. I usually wear two pairs of shoes - the outer pair I wear during the day and remove at night. They protect the inner pair, which are my sleeping shoes and are not to be shown outside the bedroom.

We stopped binding girls' feet in the early 1950s because Mao came to power and the new system did not allow it. We were told to stop, but nobody wanted to let out their own feet and refused to do so when the authorities told us to. Some people still went ahead and began binding their daughters' feet in spite of the orders and restrictions against it. Some people didn't believe that the girls could ever find husbands if they didn't bind, and they had to keep the girls hidden from view. If they were caught they were severely punished. But you can't hide your daughter forever, and most people just became too afraid of the consequences and eventually gave up and let their daughters' feet out. Why did we bind our feet? We did it because we thought it was beautiful and the way women should look. If you didn't do it you would never get married, and we did it because everybody else did it. If you didn't you were a rebel and in defiance of your parents and society!"

Chen Gan-nian

"I was born in a small village in the countryside where all the Han women bound their feet. There were many minority people who lived in or near the village, too - Yi, Hui and Miao people - but they didn't bind their feet. They were all looked down upon by the Han, and not treated well at all. If a Han girl didn't have bound feet everyone treated her just like they did the minorities. A matchmaker would never consider trying to arrange a marriage for a Han girl with normal feet.

I was four years old when I started to bind. My mother told me that I had to bind as small as possible or no one would want me when I grew up. We started out slowly, wrapping my feet loosely at first. But then the binding cloth was pulled tighter and tighter. The old people used to say that if the father does the wrapping it won't hurt so much, so my father would rebind for me every other day or so. It was still very painful and I cried a lot. I remember objecting to it and hoping they would stop if I fought against it ... but there was no way out of it. I was so young I didn't dare disobey my parents. When I was in the most pain my mother would carry me and go out to walk around. There was nothing else one could do about it. My feet hurt until I was about ten. By that time they were broken and shaped properly, and I had adjusted to walking on them. They were three inches long then. Up until that time I had worked at home doing all the housework and helping my mother make tofu to sell. Mother had even smaller feet than I did, yet she worked in the fields and went out to sell tofu every day. After I turned ten she said I had to go work in the fields, too, so I did. I learned to do everthing just like everyone else. Girls didn't go to school. you see ... that was just for boys. Girls learned only things that prepared them for marriage.

When I was 13 I started to make my own shoes. Since I could make them any way I wanted, I started making them a little larger each time so I could loosen the bindings, and bit by bit I let my feet expand. It was just too uncomfortable when they were very small. I have always washed my feet just once a week. It is very time consuming to unbind, wash, and then rebind again. I have a special tub that I use only to wash my feet in, and I never do this when anyone else is present. It must be done only in private - even my husband cannot see. After I wash, I rebind immediately. This way the feet don't expand and it is not painful. Then I put on two layers of shoes. The inner pair is for sleeping and is never removed except when I wash my feet. The outer pair protect the inner shoes and are removed every night before I go to bed.

During the mid-1930s women started to let their feet out. There was a new government policy that all women had to let out their feet or be subject to a fine. That made me extremely nervous because I was 19 at the time and not married yet. Once a girl turned 20 she was considered an old maid and no man would be interested in her, so I had to marry soon. I also knew that if I let my feet out I would have no chance of finding a husband. The size of a woman's feet often determined whether or not a man would consider marrying you. This was the first information a matchmaker had to reveal in a marriage negotiation, and I just could not take that risk. Besides, if I let my feet out I wouldn't be able to walk. It would be very painful and I would never be able to function normally. I heard stories about others who tried it and I didn't want to go through that agony, so I had to hide - I didn't go out of the house or let visitors see me. If I were to go out and be seen my parents would get fined.

Within that year I was married. A matchmaker found me a husband and arranged the whole thing. I didn't see him until the wedding day. After I was married I didn't worry so much about the idea of letting my feet out. I was still unwilling to do it, but I wasn't so afraid anymore. When I went out I just had to be very careful to avoid being seen by the police or any government people. Footbinding started during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) - the Manchu government started it to keep people within their power. The way it was, the smaller a woman"s feet, the better husband she could find. I can honestly say that it helped me find a good husband. But it also kept women weak and uneducated ... so the whole country was weak."

Huang Sheng-pai

"My family has always been very poor, but we still bound our feet. My mother also had tiny lotus feet. Many poor people bound - it wasn"t something just the rich did. We all wanted our feet to be as small as possible. The smaller, the better, we always said.

My mother started binding mine when I was eight years old. I'm 93 now and don't remember what she said to me about it, but I just figured I had to because we were so poor that we couldn't afford to buy me new shoes and socks all the time. If I bound my feet I could wear the same shoes for a long time and never outgrow them. Socks were also not needed because we would just use the same binding cloth over and over again.

That was so long ago that I don't remember if I suffered through the binding process or not. But after I started binding I no longer went out of the house. It was neither proper or allowed. I just stayed home and did the cooking for the family ... I have been doing that ever since. I have never gone outside my house for at least 70 years! All my children are dead now, but I still do all the cooking for my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I have never had much problem getting around on my feet, just being in the house and all. But now I need to use the walls for support, though, when I go from the kitchen to my room and back."

Guo Zhu-juan

"I was the only daughter in a wealthy family so it was required that I bind my feet. In my village only rich people bound their girls' feet - having small feet was one of the most important ways we differentiated ourselves from poorer families. If you didn"t bind it meant that your family was poor and that you needed the females to work in the fields. My mother had bound feet, as did my grandmother and all the other females in the families we mingled with, so there was no question whether I would or not. And since I was the only daughter I was expected to have extremely tiny feet. My mother started binding mine at the age of eight. We used to say that the most beautiful feet are narrow and pointed like a crescent moon. And of course, the smaller the foot the better. If one had really small feet one could wear an ankle bracelet, but only if your feet were very tiny. My mother allowed me to wear one ... my feet used to be quite small and crescent-shaped before I stopped binding them.

Every three days I used to wash and rebind my feet. We'd throw away the used binding cloth and rewrap with a brand new piece. which was specially made cloth that we bought in the market. It was about three inches wide and about four feet long. The whole length of cloth had to be used. When I first started binding it was extremely painful, even though the cloth was not wrapped very tightly - I was just not used to it. Then the bindings were gradually tightened and the pain became even more difficult for me to bear. I didn't cry about it, though ... I knew that the more it hurt, the better, because then my feet would be very, very small- When I just could not stand the constant pain any longer, I would have my maids help me walk around the courtyard of our house. This helped a little.

It wasn't until four years after I started to bind that the severe pains began to subside. Even now I experience much discomfort ... it's painful when I walk, and sometimes I can't stand up long enough to make a meal for myself. Since I no longer have children at home to help me, I often have no choice but to hire somebody to come make my evening meal for me. This is a financial burden that is not easy for me to handle now.

When I had bound feet I couldn't walk very far. I could only go around our courtyard or perhaps over to a neighbor's house. If I wanted to go to town I was carried in a sedan chair, which would keep me from being bumped or pushed by people on the street. Actually. young women of the upper class were not to go outside the walls of their courtyards. As was typical for a family like mine, we had walls in front of our main gate built in such a way that one could look out at the people going by, but it was impossible for them to look in. This was normally the extent of a young girl's exposure to the outside world. In my village we were not so strict as to always keep our women behind walls, though. We were allowed to go out sometimes, just around the neighborhood, or on special occasions we might be taken into town.

At that time I had four maids to help me. They all had big feet and never bound. I was able to have so many maids only because I had small feet. By the time I got married at 20 I wasn't binding as tightly as before. I remember that after about four months of marriage my husband said that if binding makes me unhappy. I could let my feet out. He was a very unselfish man, my husband. I told him that I just couldn't let them out, because it would be even more painful to have them expand. I didn't know what to do! It hurt to keep binding, yet it would hurt even more to stop.

Not long after that the Nationalist government started to fine families with bound-footed women, as part of its effort to discourage the practice. I also recall that Christians came to our village to tell us to stop binding and let our feet out. Some of these people were foreigners. They sang songs to us about footbinding and all its negative aspects, but we never paid much attention to them. The threat of having to pay a large fine, however, made us think twice about continuing to bind. I eventually decided to let my feet out, slowly loosening the bindings each time I rewrapped my feet. They began to expand a lot ... it was quite a shock for me and hurt terribly! My husband had to go out and find medicine to relieve the pain. It took me five years to let them all the way out, and then it was at least two years before the pain of that process stopped and I became accustomed to my unbound feet. The flesh on my feet has expanded, but the bones are still crushed and deformed. My toes, for example, have no bone structure in them at all. There is flesh that has expanded out again where the toes normally are, but the bones that were once there are now fused to the underside of my foot.

I suppose this custom began sometime during the Qing Dynasty. We did it so that the wealthy girls and women, who didn't work, wouldn't run around and be mischievous. It was also done to differentiate between the rich and the poor. When I look back upon it now, I feel very angry because if you had bound feet you could not go to school and get an education. So I cannot even read or sign my name properly. I have no culture, no education! This I am extremely angry about! That is why I wanted to make sure my sons and daughter all had good educations. Now they are successful and have very good jobs."

Lin Mo-he

"Oh my! You want to know about bound feet? Well, everyone around here does it. There are probably still at least 30 women in this village with lotus feet. In the old days we had to do it - if you wanted to marry you had to bind. We just took it as fact, so everyone did it, rich or poor. There were a few women who married into our village from afar and they didn"t bind everybody looked down on them and treated them badly. But now times have changed and people are no longer disrespectful of them. One of my closest friends has natural feet.

When I was eight my mother explained the necessity of binding to me, telling me that is what I had to do in order to find a husband. Then she began the process of wrapping my feet. I didn't fight her, even when it hurt so terribly. It hurt very, very much for about a year. I couldn't walk at all and cried most of the time. Then my mother, who also had tiny feet, would take me in her arms and carry me outside for a walk around the village. This would help get my mind off the pain. From the very start I never considered letting my feet out or even loosening the binding cloth. I knew that if I did no one would want to marry me.

When I was little my mother would make ever smaller shoes for me. The shorter one's feet, the better, so we would bind very tightly. Every ten days to one month she would wash my feet, rebind them even more tightly with clean cloth, and stuff them into the smaller size shoe. Later on I learned to take these responsibilities on myself, making sure that I changed into my sleeping shoes at night. I would never go to bed without them on because my feet would expand if I didn't.

I also learned to make my own shoes out of cloth, with a wooden heel and lots of little flowers and bugs embroidered on them. By the time I was married I had many, many shoes to include in my dowry - this was required, and the more you had, the better. I had a whole cabinet full of them, arranged in circles for people to see. I still have so many left and I just finished making another pair. Would you like to have them? They are yours as a gift, OK?

Ever since I started binding, I have worked mainly inside the house. Here I can do everything with no problem at all. I can even lift and carry heavy things across the room. I can't carry a shoulder pole to the fields, though, and working the crops is very difficult for me. I do other things like go down to the river to fetch water and wash clothes. I don't have the slightest problem walking - sometimes I even walk the six or seven kilometers to the next village. I can do anything!

I remember after liberation in 1949 the government told us to stop binding our feet, so we didn't bind our little girls' feet anymore. But no one who already had bound feet dared to let them out. If we were to do that we wouldn't be able to walk at all. People began binding their feet during the Qing Dynasty. I don't know what its purpose is. It's just what has been passed down as tradition. Now people don't do it anymore and that is just the way it is."