The majority of Chinese women whose feet are bound endure temporary pain, but they suffer no permanent deprivation. To take voluntary and unnecessary exercise—to take it as a pleasure—could never occur to a well-balanced Chinese mind. The Nirvâna of which the Brahmins dream is the idleness which the most favoured-by-fortune of the Chinese women realise.
Milton might have written of the small-footed women of China (had he known them—had he felt an interest in them), ‘They also serve who only sit and wait.’ They serve indeed a great racial purpose of repose as they sit and wait for an Occidental enlightenment for which they have no desire.
The Chinese are the hardest working, the most indefatigable race on earth. Consequently the grandes dames of old Cathay do even less material work than the leisured women of any other country.
Nature is the great giver of recompense; Nature saves us from universal insanity; Nature whispers in the ear of the tired, overworked Chinaman, “Rest is the superlative form of happiness. To be idle is to be in paradise.”
The Chinese bind the feet of their women not out of cruelty; they do it partly out of a deformed, over-civilised, national vanity, but still more out of a tender kindness. The woman whose feet are “small” can perform no great physical labour; she cannot trudge beneath the burning sun to tend the young rice plants; nor can she pole the heavy sampans up and down the crowded Chinese rivers.
The Chinese do not incapacitate their chosen women from enjoyment but from hardship. It is often said and printed in the West that the feet of the women of the Chinese nobility are bound, and that the feet of the peasant women are left unbound. It has been said that you can learn a Chinese woman’s rank from her feet. I have even seen it recorded in good, honest-looking type that the feet of all the Chinese women are bound.
Excepting only the descendants of Confucius there is no Chinese nobility, save the momentary nobility of personal merit. A mandarin who is “noble” because he is able is most probably rich; being rich he can afford to bind the feet of his daughter. There is no necessity for her to work. He can go further; he can secure her in perpetual idleness. Her feet are bound, and her bowl of rice is placed before her; she need never earn it by the sweat of her pretty little yellow brow.
How the preposterous notion that the feet of all Chinese women are bound ever entered the most stupid Occidental head is inconceivable. I suppose that it occurred on the same intellectual principle that impelled a San Francisco friend to say to me, “You need not tell me there’s any good in any of the Chinese, for I just know there ain’t. I know two Johns; they do my washing. They’re both thieves, they both lie, and they both gamble.”
In the poorer class (we can scarcely use the word peasant of a people by all of whom the highest nobility is attainable)—in the poorer class there is apt to be one small-footed girl in each family. If they can see their combined way to support her, the feet of the prettiest girl are bound. Don’t fancy that she resents it. She is delighted. She does only light work after that. She brings a better price in the vast Mongolian marriage market. Haply, she will, in future, be able to aid and recompense her devoted family. At the worst, they have the satisfaction of feeling that they have rescued one of their own flesh and blood from the seething, sweating struggle for Chinese existence.
Chinese shoemakers are supreme. They are an economy and a delight to every European woman who lives in Asia. Their work is swift, deft, and faultless! Their bills are charmingly little. In spite of the hard times I am beautifully shod to-day, thanks to a little yellow man who lives on Bentick Street in Calcutta. I forget his name, but I send him a very hearty chin-chin. Difficulties may arise with my landlord and my coal-merchant; but I am strong on my feet. I have a box full of lovely shoes and slippers; the most expensive pair cost me six rupees. As a rule I furnished the satin and paid my cobbler one rupee. I was with a friend yesterday, when she bought herself a pair of French boots. I saw her purse bleed gold, and my heart was full with kind thoughts of my Chinese shoemaker.