A Well of Tears for the Last Golden Lotuses

I have small feet. A women's size 5, youth 3.5, European 35, to be exact. And yes, I sometimes shop in the youth section of retail and online shoe stores. But it turns out that my so-called small feet would have been giant grotesque deformities had I been born 65 years earlier in China.

Although footbinding was officially banned in China in 1912, in actuality it took much longer for the millenium old practice and aesthetic to fade from favor. 

My mother tells stories of her grandmother, my great grandmother, who had bound feet, changing her foot binding bandages every few weeks. When great grandmother unwound her bandages, soaked her feet in a basin of hot water, hand washed her binding cloths, and hung them out to air dry, the children shrieked and ran from the holy pungent reek of dead skin and marinated sweat.

After my grandmother, born in 1921, was sold to distant relatives for 5 silver coins by her heroin addicted father shortly after the death of her mother (you can read about it here), she was put to work to earn her keep. An orphan girl, she was not high statused enough to have her feet bound, but her relatives did force her (out of love?) to make her own shoes at least a few sizes too small to preserve her chance at a decent marriage. My grandmother told me she surreptitiously made her shoes larger so her feet would not hurt as much, but when the grown ups noticed, they sent her right back to work making shoes that they deemed acceptable. They hurt like hell and contorted her feet.

This poem is inspired by stories passed down to me through my grandmother and my mother.

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It was a gesture of love.

Around ages 5 or 6

(Sometimes as early as age 3)

A loving mother

Soaked her daughter's feet

In hot water infused with medicinal herbs

(Sometimes in animal blood)

Anointed her child's feet

With a mixture of herbs and oil

Clipped her toenails short.

Mother lovingly massaged

Daughter's perfectly formed feet, bones still soft,

Skin yet uncallused

Toes plump.

Some mothers consulted fortune-tellers

Waited for the most auspicious day

To initiate daughters

Into a life that improved

Their prospects for marriage.

Some waited until winter, when the cold

Numbed the pain a little.

But who were they kidding? 

Breaking the bones

Of a little girl's feet

Eight toes 

Smushed and bent

Inward to the sole

Held in place with a 10 foot by 2 inch binding cloth

Soaked in hot water

(So that it would shrink as it dried)

Wound over and over itself

Sewn in place

With needle and thread

Sometimes so tightly the needle went through the toes 

--Is not for the faint of heart.

(If they were lucky

The big toe

Was left to breathe alone

Unbroken.)

Daughters were forced to walk 

In their bandaged feet

Until their bones were broken

The arch collapsed into itself

The feet secreted blood and pus.

They cried

Until they understood their mothers 

Could not reverse the process

Once it had begun.

It was a lifetime commitment.

The process of reversal

Would hurt more than the initial 

Breaking of bones. Once the violence was done

There was no going back.

At first their bandages were changed

Every two days

To clean the feet of blood and pus.

Every few weeks the young girls' feet

Were squeezed into even smaller shoes.

The ideal outcome:

A 3 inch golden lotus.

A 4 inch silver lotus 

Was acceptable.

Anything larger

And you might as well jump

Into a well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding#/media/File:A_HIGH_CASTE_LADYS_DAINTY_LILY_FEET.jpg

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To read more about Chinese footbinding, check out these sources:

1. Jo Farrell's Living History Project
2. Painful Memories for China's Footbinding Survivors, by Louisa Lim
3. Meet the last of China's women to have her feet bound: 102-year-old subjected to ancient custom had her toes broken when she was just two-years-old
4. Foot binding – Part 2/3: The pain and the pleasure