Extracts from
Chinese footbinding: the history of a curious erotic custom by Howard Levy. And no, I don't have a foot fetish -_-" It's one of the more interesting topics for the essay of one of my modules. Here goes, for laughs.
"A large-footed woman, when walking, sounds as thunderous as the combined noise of more than ten households."
Fang Hsun, writing 300yrs ago praising footbinding, in essays from
Qualities of Fragrant Lotuses and
A Golden Garden Miscellany, cited in the book:
Fear of being discovered - the woman who lightly touches a man's foot with her own to communicate love feelings
Never averse - the country bumpkin is never averse to choosing a wife with big feet so she can help with the work
Inevitable - the bride trying to force small shoes on her big feet to avoid being criticized by the groom
Unhappy - the wearer of new shoes who inadvertently steps in dog faeces
Unattractive - the moving buttocks of one with large feet
Pitiful - a beauty with large feet
Speechless - losing one's shoes in a crowd; the priest who secretly collects tiny embroidered shoes, only to discover that someone has stolen his collection
"... her tiny feet and thin shanks made it easy for her to turn herself about in bed... By contrast, a large-footed woman moving about under the bedcovers caused an annoying draft of cold air."
"But for women of respectable upbringing, concealment of the foot was a canon of behaviour rarely violated... unavailability served to increase the craving of the lotus flower..."
Ku Hung Ming, a conservative post-Republic/post-Revolution Chinese writer and intellectual "asserted that binding caused the blood to flow upwards and produced more voluptuous buttocks and that women wore high heels for the same reason."
There's more juicy stuff, but too.. explicit for popular consumption. Go read the book if interested. Apparently the footbinding obsession, as a mark of affluence and nobility, started in the late Tang/early Song era, and later came to be treated as an object of sexual desire, all the way up till early 20thC. That's, what, almost a millenium of footbinding. Eeks. Better to be have a 'natural foot' than a '三寸金蓮'...
Labels: musings, school
Evil looking soup that is sweet and light, boiled w seaweed, lotus root, pork ribs, dried orange peel, green beans and a number of other things I can't i/d.
Ahahahah fat goose. Too bad G not ard to dig in.
Wahaha fat juicy meat sitting plumply on top of a hill of rice woohoo!
Pork chop noodles in soup at 糖朝. Yum!
