Intimate China: The Chinese as I Have Seen Them

by Mrs. Archibald Little

CHINESE ROMAN CATHOLICS OF MANY GENERATIONS.
By Mrs. Archibald Little.

It is obvious, however, that a nation that has not stockings naturally takes to bandaging its feet, and that so doing, quite without intending it, it is very easy to alter the shape of the feet by binding them ever a little tighter, as many a European lady has done with her waist. Chinese civilisation being very ancient and conservative, abuses there go on increasing, and become exceptionally exaggerated. The Chinese are also as a nation curiously callous to suffering either in themselves or others, not taking pleasure in the infliction of it, as is the case with some more highly strung natures, but strangely indifferent to it. In all probability at first women simply bandaged their feet somewhat tightly. And just as a man in Europe used a little while ago to attach especial importance to a woman's being well shod and to the turn of her ankle, so did a Chinese man, till in the course of a thousand years we have arrived at the present abortions with a two-and-a-half-inch measurement, as also at all these stories of long dead and gone empresses and lotus flowers.

The method of binding and the period of beginning naturally differ somewhat over the whole extent of this vast empire. In the west binding seems generally to begin at six years old. In the east it is generally from five to seven, or at the latest at eight, years of age. Tsai, the good-natured Governor of Shanghai, when I met him there at a dinner party at our Chief Justice's, looked across the table at me, and said in his somewhat humorous, jerky voice, "I know what you want to talk to me about. You want to talk to me about footbinding. It is very hard, is it not? The poor little things have but two years to run." So that it would seem as if in his part of the country or in his own family binding began earlier. In the east of China the bandage is said to be of strong white cotton-cloth, two yards long and about three inches wide; and I have generally seen a two yards long bandage. The cloth is drawn as tightly as the child can bear, leaving the great toe free, but binding all the other toes under the sole of the foot, so as to reduce the width as much as possible, and eventually to make the toes of the left foot peep out at the right side and the toes of the right foot at the left side of the foot, in both cases coming from underneath the sole. Each succeeding day the bandage is tightened both morning and night; and if the bones are refractory, and spring back into their places on the removal of the bandage, sometimes a blow is given with the heavy wooden mallet used in beating clothes; and possibly it is, on the whole, kinder thus to hasten operations. Directly after binding, the little girl is made to walk up and down on her poor aching feet, for fear mortification should at once set in. But all this is only during the first year. It is the next two years that are the terrible time for the little girls of China; for then the foot is no longer being narrowed, but shortened, by so winding the bandages as to draw the fleshy part of the foot and the heel close together, till it is possible to hide a half-crown piece between them. It is, indeed, not till this can be done that a foot is considered bound. During these three years the girlhood of China presents a most melancholy spectacle. Instead of a hop, skip, and a jump, with rosy cheeks like the little girls of England, the poor little things are leaning heavily on a stick somewhat taller than themselves, or carried on a man's back, or sitting sadly crying. They have great black lines under their eyes, and a special curious paleness that I have never seen except in connection with footbinding. Their mothers mostly sleep with a big stick by the bedside, with which to get up and beat the little girl should she disturb the household by her wails; but not uncommonly she is put to sleep in an outhouse. The only relief she gets is either from opium, or from hanging her feet over the edge of her wooden bedstead, so as to stop the circulation.

WOMAN'S NATURAL FOOT, AND ANOTHER WOMAN'S FEET BOUND TO 6 INCHES.
By Dr. E. Garner.

WOMAN'S NATURAL FOOT, AND ANOTHER WOMAN'S FEET BOUND TO 4½ INCHES.
By Dr. E. Garner.