# Any videos of a woman with bound feet walking? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 6, 2005, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-videos-of-a-woman-with-bound-feet-walking/324999 "2005-10-06T03:31:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![liirogue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@liirogue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liirogue)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-videos-of-a-woman-with-bound-feet-walking/324999/1 "2005-10-06T03:31:28Z")
A lot of books talk about the unique walk of Chinese women with lotus feet. Does a video of one of these women exist? ---
**Author:** ![Hedda\_Rosa](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hedda_rosa/32/1204_2.png) [@Hedda\_Rosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hedda_Rosa)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-videos-of-a-woman-with-bound-feet-walking/324999/2 "2005-10-06T04:55:49Z")
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 ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 12:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-videos-of-a-woman-with-bound-feet-walking/324999/3 "2005-10-06T12:40:08Z")
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](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](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. ---
**Author:** ![liirogue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@liirogue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liirogue)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2005, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-videos-of-a-woman-with-bound-feet-walking/324999/4 "2005-10-06T15:17:36Z")
> [@China Guy](#): > > 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. 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. ---
**Author:** ![liirogue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/dbc845/32.png) [@liirogue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/liirogue)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2005, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-videos-of-a-woman-with-bound-feet-walking/324999/5 "2005-10-07T22:55:53Z")
Just a little bump… ---
**Author:** ![China\_Guy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/779978/32.png) [@China\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/China_Guy)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2005, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-videos-of-a-woman-with-bound-feet-walking/324999/6 "2005-10-08T01:05:51Z")
> [@liirogue](#): > > 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. 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.