Foot Binding: Confronting the Very Strange – Teaching Guide

Outline of Presentation – with [Timecode] & Slide #

Topics

• What are the common perceptions?
• What do we know about foot binding?
• Foot binding and racism [00:42] #6
  • Americans carry their own “baggage” on foot minding
  • John Wesley (1703–1791), Methodist founder
    • Condemned the Chinese for inferiority and women’s victimization
    • “worshipping” Confucius
    • an “alphabet” of 30,000 “letters”
    • foot binding
    • For many 19ths c Euro-American women, foot binding became symbol of Chinese
• Common views of foot binding:
  • Cruel & backward “traditional” patriarchy?
  • Women as mere sex objects or baby-factories?
    • So, foot binding:
    • Men oppressing women
    • Crippled women 
    • To keep them inside
    • To enforce chastity
    • To show off family wealth
    • Conspicuous consumption
    • As perverse sex fetish
    • But millions of women participated in it! [02:24]

How do Historians Confront the Very Strange? [04:12] #9

I. Analogues

• Consider analogues in our own place-time to avoid judgment. [03:03]
• Consider analogues in our place, earlier time [04:12]
  • What did the missionary Euro-American women who fought foot binding in the late Qing wear? #11
  • Corsets [05:00]
• Consider analogues in our own time:  adornment or mutilation?
  • Botox; piercing
• Analogues raise questions: corsets are like foot binding [07:19]

II. How was it Done? [08:20] #16

• Traditional sources on bound feet

III. Historians consult new evidence [13:15] #24–25]

• Discover that women [20:01] #37
  • Walked (sometimes with pain)
  • Worked (indoors and out)
  • Kept up their own bindings
  • Decided size and shape of foot
  • Took pride in feet and shoes
  • Shared shoe culture with other women
  • Understood binding as meaningful

IV. Historical Context – Brief History of Foot Binding in China [#38]

• Changes between medieval period of Tang dynasty (618–906 CE) and early modern period of the Song dynasty (960-1279) and thereafter #40
• Timeline:
• 500s CE – dancers [20:21] #41
• First reference: Tang poem 9th c.
  • First excavated small shoes: 1200’s
  • Song courtesan v. wife competition?
  • Spreading in Ming
  • To all classes and regions in Qing
  • But not Manchus or Hakka
  • Not clear how universal it became
  • Taiping rebels unbind feet 1850–1862
  • Late 19th c. campaigns against it
  • Not associated with Neo-Confucianism, although some think that because it arises as the same time in the Song when the latter becomes widespread
• Search for other possible causes or explanations of why foot binding began [#43]
• What about self-identity and labor during the Tang dynasty that changes with the Song?
  • Work during the Tang dynasty vs. work during the Song
  • Song commercialization
• Work and Self-Respect/Identity [25:06] #60
• Tang dynasty work:
  • Elite men work with their brains:
  • Culture and governing
  • Ordinary men farm
  • All women make textiles
  • Work shapes identity
  • Tang women made whole cloth
  • Clothe family and pay taxes
  • Cloth was currency
• Song dynasty commercial economy:
  • labor was divided
  • Not making whole cloth
  • Paper & metal currency
• Contribution to family and state are hidden.
• What does this have to do with foot binding? #60

Why teach your daughters to foot-bind? [27:30] #61–62

Conclusion

• What have we learned? [30:28]
• Has our view of foot binding been complicated? #63–64
• Who’s the Barbarian?
  • Quote from Captain Arthur Cunningham, 1845 #66
  • British memoir of Opium War