what convinced the Chinese to UNbind their feet is the real question

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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We all know that the Chinese bound women’s feet- starting from almost birth- but the real question is, why did they stop?

Being an avid reader, and me really enjoying reading yet not able to afford buying books whenever I want, I use gutenberg.org a LOT. That means- lots of out of copyright (read: old) books. I found the answer as to why Chinese girls no longer have bound feet: Introducing the FIRST woman to never, ever bind her feet in China.

“On the “first day of the third moon” of the year 1873, a young Chinese father knelt by the side of his wife and, with her, reverently consecrated to the service of the Divine Father the little daughter who had that day been given them. They named her “Maiyü,”—“Beautiful Gem”—and together agreed that this perfect gift should never be marred by the binding of the little feet. It was unheard of! Even the servant women of Kiukiang would have been ashamed to venture outside the door with unbound feet, and the very beggar women hobbled about on stumps of three and four inches in length. No little girl who was not a slave had ever been known to grow up with natural feet before, in all Central or West China. That the descendant of one of the proudest and most aristocratic families of China, whose genealogical records run back without a break for a period of two thousand years, little Shih Maiyü, should be the first to thus violate the century-old customs of her ancestors, was almost unbelievable.”

"“If the Lord gives me a little daughter I shall not bind her feet.” Spoken by the mother of the first baby girl with unbound feet.

That baby girl became Dr Alice Stone (anglicized name of Maiyu Shih)

Her father was a Methodist pastor, converted by Christian missionaries to China. Dr Mary Stone’s story and work is AMAZING. Truly fascinating.

I had no idea of this story ever existing, I just thought foot binding fell out of favor through changing fads.

Source: Notable Women of Modern China by Margaret E Burton

copied from The Project Gutenberg eBook of Notable Women Of Modern China, by Margaret E. Burton.

LINK TO COLUMN: What’s the story on the ancient Chinese custom of binding women’s feet? - The Straight Dope

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So, what did convince the Chinese to unbind their feet?

You’re saying it all began with this Maiyü character, back in 1873. Then what happened?

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Wiki has an interesting link on this appalling and thankfully largely extinct practice. Foot binding - Wikipedia

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It’s customary to provide a link to the column, isn’t it?

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I thought it was the rise of the communists that was the downfall of foot-binding.

I also thought that it was an aristocratic thing and that most peasants didn’t go in for that (couldn’t afford it, as they were expected to work for a living). My understanding was that this was partly responsible for the enduring popularity of the practice; that it was a dramatic proof of your aristocratic pedigree and lack of need for functional feet.

Set me straight!!

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Okay, I broke down and read wikipedia. Apparently, there were many movements afoot to banish the practice over the years. After limited success from previous governments and social movements, the communists finally managed to stamp it out.

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For certain values of “limited success”. I would have phrased that:

“After general suppression from previous governments”

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Just nitpicking on the Padaung:
their rings don’t elongate their necks. The weight of the rings leads to a sagging of the collarbones and shoulders, giving them real sloping shoulders and making their necks SEEM longer.

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So Margaret E Burton was less than fully accurate in her writing? Not surprising from the writing style. Another of her books is on google books: Women Workers of the Orient. You can get a pretty good idea of a 1909 missionary’s view of The Orient from her, but she’s not a historian.

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http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/12/unraveling-a-brutal-custom/

Probably economics.

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Right, and historians are fully accurate? I’m sorry, I take a more marxist attitude towards historians.

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Ugh while this was pretty horrific all around the detail that struck me the most was that while it was considered erotic the foot would not be unbound because of the smell.

DAMN

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You do understand that only “high class” folks practiced foot binding, right? It was never the majority of women in China, right? In fact, the first Manchu emperor started the mass effort to stop the practice: Foot binding - Wikipedia

It wasn’t one incident that stopped foot binding. “Modern” families just gradually stopped the practice. It was dead long before the 1949 founding of the People’s Republic (communist takeover)

Foot binding basically died out in the 1910’s. It was a time of immense upheaval in Chinese society with the ending of the Manchu dynasty (1911), the rise of the warlord period, and trying to compete/adjust to the West.

In the early 1980’s, it wasn’t horribly uncommon to see elderly women with formerly bound feet. Once you saw one, the rest stuck out like a sore thumb given their handicapped gait and almost always using a cane. For some reason, Kunming had a lot of these women.

I never saw a person with bound feet in Taiwan (I first lived there in 1982) and lived there for about 3 years in the 80’s. As I understand, it wasn’t a widespread practice in Taiwan.

I distinctly remember going to watch the superbowl in 1999 in Shanghai. As I walked to the expat bar at 6:00am, there was an elderly woman (very elegantly dressed) at the entrance of an old Western apartment building presumably waiting for a car to pick her up (near the intersection of Yan’an west road and Nanjing Road). She had bound feet. It was the first and only time of living in Shanghai for 12 years that I saw someone with bound feet.