A lot of books talk about the unique walk of Chinese women with lotus feet. Does a video of one of these women exist?
Yes, but I can’t find a cite. Maybe someone else can.
I have seen, more than once, a show on Discovery or TLC or a similar channel, about bound feet. They featured one or two 80+ year-old-women who had bound feet and yep, showed 'em walking.
Looked painful, as you might expect.
Twiddle
search is your friend:
Here’s FootBinding: Search for the Three Inch Golden Lotus
“If you love your daughter, bind her feet; if you love your son, let him study,” or so goes the old Chinese saying. Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yue-Qing Yang returns to her birthplace to unravel the secrets of footbinding, an ancient Chinese custom that saw a sculpted three-inch foot become the feminine ideal. In interviews with aging Chinese women, including her own mother and aunt, Yue-Qing begins to grasp the complexity of this once widespread practice.
http://www.movingimages.ca/catalogue/Cultdiverse/footbinding.html
Here’s where you can buy it:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/pipermail/videonews/2005-February/000891.html
I’ve seen a number of foot bound ladies in the 1980’s, especially in Kunming, Yunnan Province. Also saw one about 6 years ago in Shanghai. anyone with bound feet is really getting up in age as the practice more or less died out in the 1920’s.
I never talked to any of them as I respected their privacy and it was always on the street. I can only imagine their harsh experience growing up after foot binding was no longer a special thing and during the post communist time. Only relatively wealthy people induldged in foot binding. Whilst a symbol of burgoise decadance, I doubt if it was a positive experience during the post revolution and cutural revolution time.
Actually, after seeing one such person, others stood out like a sore thumb on the street. They all had a hobbling gait and usually used canes. A quick glance at the foot would confirm that they had bound feet or previously bound feet.
Really? I was told that it started in the upper classes but soon spread to the lower, where about 90-95% of Han Chinese women had their feet bound.
I don’t mean to challenge you, I’m simply curious.
Just a little bump…
It’s a complicated subject and there are plenty of scholary works out there. A casual internet search pulls up a lot of dreck and WAG’s.
It may be true that at one point 90% of a certain class of women had their feet bound. But this did not extend to the peasantry, which made up more than 90% of the population. The ruling Manchurians also outlawed footbinding among Manchurians when they came to power in the Qing Dynasty.
Think about it, peasantry has always been about 1 harvest away from starvation - why would they cut out half their work force?
BTW, there should be any number of Chinese produced documentaries on foot binding. Some obviously political vehicles and others more documentary.