Golden Lilies
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
My friend Connie and I started a two person book club for a while; just Connie and me and the chosen book made three. The first book we read was Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. I would give the book 5 stars and I know I am not alone as it was a huge bestseller.
The part of the book that had the most staying power with me was the rite of foot binding which is covered extensively in the story. For the very first time I was made aware of the horrors involved in that "beautification" rite. Since reading the book I have done more research and found the following article to be very revealing.
"The tradition of foot-binding is tied up in issues of beauty, marriageability and sex.
Chinese foot-binding, according to author Beverley Jackson, is all about sex.
That explains a lot. Historians have tried to explain foot-binding in terms of a culture's standard of beauty or as a way of holding a woman to a household, but these explanations seemed to lack the kind of power that would sustain a custom for several centuries. Just think of how many times the beauty ideal has changed in this country within the last 100 years, from voluptuousness to fitness to heroin chic. And man's vanity rarely allows him to believe his woman would run away.
Add sex to the equation, however, and one can certainly understand the motivation. Since Adam and Eve took a bite out of that apple in the Garden of Eden, humans have shown that they will do just about anything -- good, evil or in between -- for sex.
Jackson is the curator of the Chinese collection at the Santa Barbara Historical Society Museum, a collector of Chinese textiles and the author of "Splendid Slippers: A Thousand Years of an Erotic Tradition,".
"To this day elderly Chinese men will look at a woman's feet before her face. Dolly Parton wouldn't stand a chance," Jackson said. "They look at my size 10 feet and laugh."
She said the foot-binding custom is believed to have originated a thousand years ago in the court of Prince Li Yu, whose favorite concubine was known for toe-dancing in an early variation of ballet. The royal craze moved down the social ladder, eventually reaching peasants who hoped to achieve higher status through smaller feet.
Jackson estimates there are still about a million women in China with bound feet. Although the custom was banned by the Communists in 1949, Jackson said the practice continued in some areas until 1957.
Contrary to belief that binding started in infancy, Jackson said it was started at age 6 to give the foot's arch time to develop. Feet were wrapped in cotton, with only the big toe left free. In time, the bandage was wrapped tighter until the other toes were broken and forced flat against the soles. The ideal was a 3-inch foot called san zun jin lian, or golden lily, and woe to the girl whose future mother-in-law was allowed to do the binding.
With their feet bound, women walked with a "lotus gait" that tightened their pelvic muscles. "The men said it was like always making love to a virgin," Jackson said.
Her book resulted from seven years of research sparked by a pair of embroidered slippers measuring less than 5 inches, found in a Scotland antique store in the '80s.
"The owner didn't know anything about them, which was nice because I bought them for $10," she said. "I hate to tell you what I'm paying for them now."
Today, the author owns 174 pairs of delicate hand-embroidered shoes, made by their owners to cover their bound feet.
A young Chinese woman would spend years embroidering tiny shoes for her bound feet. This example is from Beverley Jackson's collection.
But this was not her first foray into things Chinese. She had already been a collector of antique Chinese robes, started in 1975 with a visit to Shanghai, China.
Back in Santa Barbara, Jackson became a popular lecturer on Chinese robes and textiles. "I would have a robe hanging at the foot of my bed and start writing, wondering what women's' lives were like. I started doing research out of curiosity, but at lectures, the only questions people had were about foot-binding. Then I thought, if everyone's so interested, I should write a book."
The book dispels several misconceptions, including the belief that foot-binding was practiced by nobles and in limited areas. In reality, only the Hakka community and the boat dwellers of the Tanka community shunned the custom. Some men -- primarily actors and prostitutes -- also bound their feet.
Parts of Jackson's book are written from the perspective of Phoenix Treasure, a fictional composite of a child who pleads with her mother not to bind her feet.
As a teen, Phoenix Treasure is resigned to her fate and finds solace in needlework, her sole source of freedom and creativity.
Another embroidered shoe from Beverley Jackson's collection.
"I've seen the pride women had in their finished slippers," Jackson said. "It gave vent to their imagination and they were able to create such beautiful things.
"It's like having a baby. Childbirth is not pleasant, even with medication, but we forget the pain because we're so proud of our babies."
Repelled at first by the notion of bound feet, she said, "I had to submerge myself in the better side because if I dwelled on the pain I might not have been able to do the book."
The book is full of photographs of the embroidered shoes, as well as women, with their tiny pointed feet sticking out from beneath Mandarin gowns. There are also X-ray photos of mangled feet and in one case, a photo of a mummified foot that had fallen off due to gangrene.
"I show that foot in my lectures. When I do my talks audiences get somewhat squeamish. I tell them, 'Look at this next slide real fast,' then I show a nice picture of a lotus bloom while I'm talking about that foot.
"My talks can get pretty graphic and sexy sometimes. Once I was invited to lecture to a group called the 'Old Treasures.' Here was this sea of white hair, people with canes and walkers and I told them I didn't know how far I should go in telling the sexual aspects of foot-binding.
"Well, one old woman stood up and raised her cane and said, 'We want to hear all you got!' " (End of Jackson's article)
Antique Lotus Shoes
We just acquired a great little collection of Antique Lotus Shoes for bound feet. Imported directly from China, these shoes have actually been worn for years by women that have had their feet bound. These are getting extremely difficult to locate and this collection is the first we have managed to find in over a year.
What price beauty...
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