page_title: Foot binding
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Foot binding / History / Origin
caption_attribution_description: English: Illustration showing Yaoniang (窅娘) binding her own feet, Qing Dynasty woodblock print from Hundred Poems of Beautiful Women (Bai Mei Xin Yong Tu Zhuan 百美新詠圖傳)
context_page_description: Foot binding was the Chinese custom of applying tight wrappings to the feet of young girls to modify their shape and size. The practice possibly originated among upper class court dancers during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in 10th-century China, then gradually became popular among the elite during the Song dynasty. Foot binding eventually spread to most social classes by the Qing dynasty and the practice finally came to an end in the early 20th century. Bound feet were at one time considered a status symbol as well as a mark of beauty. Yet foot binding was a painful practice and significantly limited the mobility of women, resulting in lifelong disabilities for most of its subjects. Feet altered by binding were called lotus feet.
  Foot binding was practiced in different forms, and the more severe form of binding may have been developed in the 16th century. It has been estimated that by the 19th century, 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, and up to almost 100% among upper-class Chinese women. The prevalence and practice of foot binding however varied in different parts of the country.
context_section_description: There are a number of stories about the origin of foot binding before its establishment during the Song dynasty. One of these involves the story of a favourite consort of the Southern Qi emperor Xiao Baojuan, Pan Yunu (died 501 AD), who had delicate feet and danced barefoot on a floor decorated with golden lotus flower design. The emperor expressed admiration and said that "lotus springs from her every step!" (步步生蓮), a reference to the Buddhist legend of Padmavati under whose feet lotus springs forth. This story may have given rise to the terms "golden lotus" or "lotus feet" used to describe bound feet; there is, however, no evidence that Consort Pan ever bound her feet.
  The general view is that the practice is likely to have originated in the time of the 10th-century Emperor Li Yu of the Southern Tang, just before the Song dynasty. Li Yu created a six-foot tall golden lotus decorated with precious stones and pearls, and asked his concubine Yao Niang (窅娘) to bind her feet in white silk into the shape of the crescent moon, and perform a ballet-like dance on the points of her feet on the lotus. Yao Niang's dance was said to be so graceful that others sought to imitate her. The binding of feet was then replicated by other upper-class women and the practice spread.
  Some of the earliest possible references to foot binding appear around 1100, when a couple of poems seemed to allude to the practice. Soon after 1148, in the earliest extant discourse on the practice of foot binding, scholar Zhang Bangji wrote that a bound foot should be arch shaped and small. He observed that "women's footbinding began in recent times; it was not mentioned in any books from previous eras." In the 13th century, scholar Che Ruoshui wrote the first known criticism of the practice: "Little girls not yet four or five years old, who have done nothing wrong, nevertheless are made to suffer unlimited pain to bind [their feet] small. I do not know what use this is."
  The earliest archaeological evidence for foot binding dates to the tombs of Huang Sheng, who died in 1243 at the age of 17, and Madame Zhou, who died in 1274. Each had her feet bound with 6-foot-long gauze strips. Zhou's skeleton was well preserved and showed that her feet fit the narrow, pointed slippers that were buried with her. The style of bound feet found in Song dynasty tombs, where the big toe was bent upward, appears to be different from the norm of later eras, and the excessive smallness of the feet, the "three-inch golden lotus", may be a later development in the 16th century.
caption: 18th-century illustration showing Yao Niang binding her own feet
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