My Great Grandmother’s Three-Inch Feet

My great-grandmother (on my father side) passed away when I was only 12 years old. By then she was 91 years old. Her feet with bound since she was a young girl so even at 91 her feet were only three-inch long, which also known as “three-inch golden lotuses”. She was very tra­di­tional, strict and seri­ous Chi­nese lady but always kind.

I remem­bered when I was a lit­tle kid; she always brought me to the mar­ket near our house and bought food for the entire fam­ily. Because of her age and her three-inch feet, when she walked, she needed a walker to steady her­self and keep her body bal­anced. And she couldn’t walk that far, espe­cially long dis­tances for extended times.

My grand­mother, on the other hand, also had bound feet, but hers were a lit­tle bit big­ger, maybe about four-inches. She told me it was because her mother hadn’t bound her feet that long. Later I learned that her mother started to bind her feet when she was four years old, while my great-grandmother’s feet bound when she was only three years old! So prob­a­bly that explains why her feet were smaller than my grandmother’s.

My grand­mother, on my father’s side, is now 83 years old and lives with my par­ents. Both of my great-grandmother and my grandmother’s father would not allow them to attend school. They was never able to even read or write their own name. They made their own three-inch golden lotus shoes.

I remem­bered every year, in the spring and sum­mer when the weather started to become warmer, in the early evening; they would sit out­side the house and make their own shoes and clothes while chat­ting with our neigh­bors. They spent their “leisure” time mak­ing elab­o­rate shoes for them­selves. I was so small at that time, but I would also sit there and help them pre­pare the mate­r­ial, such as prepar­ing the glue into the bowl for them to use. The glue was home­made from starch powder.

Because my par­ents were young and busy with their work in that time, so they sent me to live with my grand­par­ents (my father side) since one year old (I live with them until 17 years old, then back to live with my par­ents). That’s why I got chance to spend my child­hood and teen time with my great-grandmother and had lot of con­ver­sa­tion with her.

She told me I am a very lucky girl because I don’t have to bind­ing my feet and face all the pain.

She said she cried a lot when her mother bind­ing her feet, as well as my grand­mother who said the same thing to me. Their mother were using strip of ban­dage ten feet long and two inches wide was wrapped tightly around their foot to stop it from devel­op­ing prop­erly. The four small toes were bro­ken and bent under the sole. The arch of the foot was bowed to make the foot shorter. The ban­dage was tight­ened each day and the foot was put into smaller and smaller shoes. In two years, the process was fin­ished. By then, the foot was use­less for walk­ing very far.

The entire bind­ing process was very painful! But they have no choices and they couldn’t do any­thing since they were born into a big family.

They told me, in that time, a girl with a three-inch foot will be con­sid­ered as per­fect, as beau­ti­ful. Girls from a poor fam­ily could never afford to have bound feet because they need a pair of strong broad feet for hard work. Three-inch feet are a sym­bol of women’s sta­tus and iden­tity. It was a sym­bol of wealthy. For the wealthy it was sta­tus and proof of a girl’s worth. Both of my great-grandmother and my grandmother’s feet are just slightly larger than cig­a­rette box.

Foot bind­ing was designed to lit­er­ally keep women in their place. Regarded as prop­erty, they couldn’t walk more than a few steps with­out some­one to sup­port them. This guar­an­teed they weren’t going to get any­where unless they were will­ing to crawl.

This tra­di­tion painful art prac­tice has been last one thou­sand years. The prac­tice of foot bind­ing finally declared ille­gal dur­ing the for­ma­tion of the People’s Repub­lic of China in 1949.

I missed my great-grandmother and my grand­mother very much, missed the nice time that we spent together. When I live with them, I like to watch their feet because their feet so small and so cute (even smaller than my child­hood feet). I am still doing that — watch my grandmother’s feet every time I go to visit her.

I was won­der­ing if the prac­tices of foot bind­ing still exist today. Where am I then? What my feet will look like — maybe I get two-inch feet instead of three, huh!