I found the facts about binding the women's feet to be incredible. Good thing I wasn't born in China during the Song Dynasty because I don't like pain and I would not have wanted to be crippled.
I am sort of glad that Li Juzhen attacked the "curious erotic custom" by turning the tables and having males undergo the same treatment. I am saying "sort of" because I don't really like to see anyone in pain, either gender. However, in this case, it is an "eye for an eye", as I am sure that the footbinding ritual was NOT instigated by a female!
Same old thing, footbinding was a social class issue. It is strange tht the elite woem went through the pain, and not the ones who worked in the fields.
I must add, that as a female today, I would not bind my feet to keep them small just to keep a male happy. On the flip side of that, if tht is what I was expected to do, and told to do, then I prob. would have done it![Edit by="dgoldstein on Oct 22, 9:36:27 AM"][/Edit]

Once again a class where we received a tremendous amount of information in a short time. Clayton really knows his stuff. I thought it was interesting when you stopped and asked the class for ideas on how to teach some of the things we talked about last night. It is fun for teachers to share and you think about your audience when you teach. Thanks for that.

The more classes I attend, the more I realize how little I actually know about China. You can't see the Great Wall from space?!? Actually, I already knew that, but there is a lot I didn't know. I find the debate over whether Marco Polo ever actually made it to China intriguing. I also appreciate the personal pictures Clay throws into his presentations - it makes the subject more real for me.

The more I learn about China's history, the easier it is put everything in context and retain the material. As a student, I learned very little about Asian history, so even being familiar with basic pronunciations and general time frames is very helpful. Also, I have noticed many similarities between Chinese and European history (they both have a medieval period, a period of absolutism, trade/expansion, etc.), though China's historical periods pre-date those of Europe, which would be an interesting point to make with my AP Euro students. Perhaps we could discuss whether all regions are destined to have such periods (slavery, serfdom, absolutism, etc.) . . .

Thank you, Clayton, for your insights, visuals, and information!

Hi Clayton,
I actually have a question, but I didn't know how to email you with it other than using this forum, so this is NOT a post. My question is:
Elizabeth, my colleage at Grant High School, and I rented The Last Emperor yesterday. I loved the movie. It was a bit long, but very informative and very well done. My question is what happened to him att the end? He gave the cricket container to the little child and then he disappeard. The movie lists his date for his death as 1967. Did he die? Why was there no funeral or anything? Did he disappear? Did he go into hiding? I felt the end was unclear, orelse I missed something.
Thanks,
Dottie

I agree with the post that the more I come to classes the more I come to realize that I knew very little of the Chinese culture. I'm so excited to start implementing all this material and knowledge. I am still very new to the curriculum of China, and find the material provided very useful to my instruction. I especially enjoyed visually being able to see the transition of geography according to the dynasties, whether it was Mongol, Manchurian etc. The culture and history of China is very dynamic and I am discovering that more and more as we continue the seminars. Seeing the material organized makes so much more sense and really makes it easier to process. Oh and I especially enjoy seeing the pictures of China, especially that of the temple built on the cliff!

Footbinding was a cruel practice. None of those who study it will describe it differently. All acknowledge the pain and suffering it meant for girls. It's important to remember also that plastic surgery, tattoos, piercings, and so on are generally undertaken by adults (well informed adults? that's another question, sober adults, yet another question). Also, these are generally reversible (not pain-free and not necessarily easy, but reversible). Footbinding was carried out on children by adults and left them permanently injured.

Prof. Pitelka will be discussing footbinding with the group before too long in his session on women in East Asia. He will note that in addition to being cruel, it was an act of love and an act designed to serve the family. Please listen carefully to these points.

Footbinding is one of the topics that every teacher needs to discuss when looking at the varying experiences of Chinese women. It emerges about a thousand years ago and survived into the last century.

Not all women had their feet bound. Many non-Han ethnic groups such as the Hakka and Manchus did not bind their women's feet and it was much less common among ordinary people in the South than it was in the North, probably because women in the South usually joined in agricultural labor.

How are we to understand this custom and role men and women played in perpetuating it? How should we raise the topic with children? Is it enough to note that our own culture imposes standards of beauty that cause some to endure suffering, surgery, or psychological damage?

Below are some web resources on footbinding that you may find interesting.

California resident Beverly Jackson is a longtime collector of the shoes worn by Chinese women with bound feet. She traveled to China and interviewed women who had their feet bound and produced a lavishly illustrated volume Splendid Slippers. Her website offers short excerpts from the book, reviews of it, and -- of course -- a link to buy the volume. Combined with works by Howard Levy and Dorothy Ko, this is a good resource to draw upon in introducing the practice to students.

http://www.silcom.com/~bevjack/

Levy, Howard S. Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom, Foreword by Arthur Waley. Introd. by Wolfram Eberhard. New York, W. Rawls, 1966.

Ko, Dorothy. Every Step a Lotus : Shoes for Bound Feet. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001. Below is a link to the UC Press webpage on the book. You can download and read chapter 2. It includes terrific images. Prof. Ko has also written "The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-Century China," The Journal of Women's History 8.4.

http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9687.php

Feng Jicai, one of China's most popular writers, authored an interesting novel on the custom and its place in family and social life. Three Inch Golden Lotus. It was translated by David Wakefield and published by the University of Hawaii Press.

Yue-qing Yang's 2004 film Footbinding: The Search for the Three-Inch Golden Lotus is available and includes interviews with Chinese about the custom. In the film, Dorothy Ko argues that footbinding is routinely misunderstood.

http://www.channelcanada.com/Article638.html