Foot-binding first began in Li Yu's reign in the Southern Tang Dynasty (969-975). A young girl in Li Houzhu is very clever. She wrapped her feet in a crescent shape with silk and danced on the golden lotus to please the emperor. Later, this custom spread to the people and the wind of foot binding gradually spread to people's homes. However, some people think that foot-binding appeared as early as 770-476 BC during the Warring States Period, which may be traced back to the earlier Shang Dynasty. In a word, foot-binding has a long history, which has hurt countless women in China for thousands of years. It can be said that foot-binding is one of the most prominent manifestations of "men are superior to women" under the patriarchal tradition. According to records, folk women began to bind their feet at the age of four or five, and when they reached adulthood, if their feet were less than three inches long, they became the highly respected "three-inch golden lotus". At that time, such little feet were considered as an important aspect of "female beauty". Even a woman with good looks and figure will be laughed at if her feet are not small enough, so she can't get married. "Good bigfoot" has also become the most unpleasant word to insult and humiliate women. In fact, the "beauty" of little feet is based on the premise that women's body and mind are destroyed. The method of foot binding is to cruelly cause dislocation or fracture of metatarsal bone of female foot by artificial force, then fold it on the sole of foot, and then wrap it tightly with foot binding cloth layer by layer. Women who bind their feet have difficulty walking and great pain, and are more likely to cause disability and death. The folk saying "a pair of little feet and a jar of tears" is a concentrated reflection of women's suffering for thousands of years. Once the natural feet are entangled into a "three-inch golden lotus", women must be very inconvenient and greatly restricted in labor and communication. Only when you are trapped at home, you should stand against the wall when you stand and walk. Not only is it natural that "men dominate outside and women dominate inside", but "men are strong and women are weak" has become a fact. It is even more difficult for women to be dissatisfied, resist and elope, but they must submit to humiliation. In fact, this kind of "beauty", which is against nature and health and based on destroying women's bodies, is not only an extreme distortion and metamorphosis of beauty, but also has the practical effect of strengthening the oppression and control of women in a patriarchal society, as the Daughter Classic says: "I am afraid that he or she will leave home lightly and be bound by thousands of layers."

Foot-binding rose because of men's addiction, and men's aesthetic distortion was out of control because of the "three-inch golden lotus", until women's destroyed feet became an important item to arouse men's sexual excitement. According to records, since the Song Dynasty, a "drinking" game has been popular in many brothels. From beginning to end, prostitutes' little feet and their little shoes stand out, and prostitutes' clients put wine glasses in prostitutes' little shoes to pass, pour and drink. Until the beginning of the 20th century, there were still some men who liked to participate in this "drinking" game and were excited about the opportunity to drink with the wine glasses in prostitutes' little shoes. As for the sour literati in the past dynasties, they regarded the discussion of feet as "learning" with great interest, and they did not hesitate to write articles and carefully evaluate them, taking pleasure in being humble, for fear that the aesthetic composition and flirting function of men playing with feet were not clearly explained. For example, in the Qing Dynasty, a scholar named Fang Xuan, who claimed to be "Dr. Xiang Lian", wrote an article "Made in Xiang Lian" and painstakingly divided the feet into five types, nine types and eighteen types, which made him famous.

The folk proverb is very vivid: "Wrap your feet and shed a jar of tears". Foot-binding usually begins at the age of 4 or 5, and takes 3 or 4 years, and it is finalized at the age of 7 or 8. Burn your feet with hot water before binding them. While the feet are still hot, bend the four toes outside the big toe to the soles of the feet and stick them tightly, and apply alum between the toes. Over time, your feet will bow and bend short, so your feet will sag, your instep will bulge and your feet will shorten.

Mrs. Wu from Yunnan Village recalled her foot-binding experience like this: her mother put it under her ankle with a "piercing" on the loom, which made her ankle bulge. Then, wrap it up and force her to go. Slowly, my ankle was shot. So she couldn't get out of bed and walk for more than a month. Although her ankle is broken, her feet are still bloated and ugly. Her mother kept saying, why aren't your feet rotten? Her grandmother also said, it's terrible. It's time to use it. So, under the guidance of her grandmother, her mother found half a porcelain bowl, smashed it into pieces, put it on the soles of her feet, ankles and feet, wrapped it with foot-binding cloth, put on little shoes and let her work in the fields. Her feet were cut, and blood oozed from the foot-binding cloth, turning black and smelly. She is often pale with pain, in a trance and has lost a lot of weight.

Foot binding changes the shape of the foot through external force, which seriously affects the normal development of the foot and causes soft tissue contracture. This painful process cannot be described in words. /kloc-for more than 0/000 years, millions of women in Qian Qian, China have suffered from this kind of pain since childhood, and they are unwilling to endure this kind of psychological and physical destruction.

Is foot binding really that beautiful? So that men regard it as the most important criterion when they get married, while women regard it as a major change that must be realized in life. That was not the case. The following is a true description of the little feet, which makes people feel very emotional. Judging from our present aesthetics, we may even think that our ancestors were so unreasonable.

Generally speaking, the little foot looks like a fire injury from the front, taking off the rotten flesh of dried tangerine peel and revealing a deformed and discolored pimple. Only one toe is tilted, and the nails on it can be vaguely distinguished. Everything else presents a disgusting vague outline. Viewed from the side, the toes and heels have been broken and the two parts are close together. Under the echo of soft meat, a curve of standing at both ends is formed, the heel swells, the sole of the foot disappears and the instep bulges. The total length of the foot is less than half the natural length, and the whole foot is like an irregular triangle. The scariest thing is to look at the soles of your feet from the front. It completely dispels the original image of human feet, which is an absurd model. There is no smooth pedal except for the deformed heel. The four toes are turned outwards, with different lengths, around the foot center with the big toe as the axis, so the front of the toes becomes the foot center, which is completely twisted and pressed under the foot center.

We all know very well that such feet are ugly if their aesthetics are not beyond the normal state. In fact, such feet are not healthy and practical, and foot binding is harmful to people for life. The center of gravity of a woman with small feet moved to the outside of her feet, which made it extremely inconvenient to move. In addition, they often suffer from early-onset degenerative arthritis in adulthood.

Whether it is pleasing to the eye or healthy and practical, it is not allowed for women to prick their feet. However, such cruel behavior prevailed in the history of China for more than 1000 years, so that we have to admit that it was an influential culture in ancient China. The unhealthy visual aesthetic orientation of the ancients is like a complex mystery (of course, it is definitely not just an aesthetic problem), and there are too many things behind this mystery that deserve our deep thinking and reflection.

Many people think that the custom of female foot-binding is the product of feudal society and patriarchal society. Obviously, there are many internal relations between the two, but it is doubtful to say that the foot culture must be equal to the feudal society and the patriarchal society. In the west, it also experienced feudal society. The status of women was once very low. Their women gain men's approval by girding their waists and wearing high heels. I have never heard of the rumor that women are forced to bind their feet in history. Anyway, it is more civilized than foot binding.

It is said that the origin of women's foot-binding is this: Li Houzhu (937-978 AD) in the Southern Tang Dynasty, because she liked the little feet of maid-in-waiting Ruiniang, made her tie her feet in the shape of a crescent moon, and thus became the most favored woman in the palace. So foot binding became popular in the palace. Because of the exemplary role of the emperor, little feet became fashionable, and then officialdom and folk also became popular one after another.

This has not been confirmed, but one thing is certain: women did not have to bind their feet in the Tang Dynasty. It was from the Song Dynasty (960- 1234) that Confucian scholars and even peasant men began to pursue women's "three-inch golden lotus" obsessively. But as we all know, the feudal society in China was formed before Qin Shihuang unified the whole country (22 1 year BC). From now on, the custom of foot-binding is not a companion of feudal society and patriarchal society.

Now there is one of the biggest questions, that is, why the inhuman and cruel custom of female foot-binding prevailed in the Song Dynasty, which became more civilized with the progress of history. In fact, the saying of "three-inch golden lotus" originated from Xiao Baojuan, a young emperor of the Northern Qi Dynasty. She praised her favorite concubine Pan Yuer for her delicate boneless feet. "Lotus is born step by step!" However, there was no such tendency in the aesthetic appreciation of feet at that time and later in the Sui and Tang Dynasties, so it was absolutely impossible for women to bind their feet by accident in the Song Dynasty, and it must have its social and ideological roots. Because of the long time, it is difficult to find first-hand information, so we can only make some reasonable reasoning based on the historical data of social culture at that time. Below I want to do my best to do some in-depth thinking and exploration on this issue.

Any phenomenon can be traced back to the history and reality of society, and its roots can generally be traced back to culture, and foot customs are no exception. The cultural environment in which the custom of little feet exists must be an irrational culture. Generally speaking, the singleness or monotony of the core idea in cultural connotation can easily lead to cultural irrationality, because it is difficult to reflect on the idea itself without the contention of different ideas, and the cultural unification of the core idea is easy to go to extremes because of the lack of checks and balances of other ideas. When this deformed culture dominates a country, the people of this country are simplified to individuals by a single thought, and there is no internal driving force for thinking, whether from the individual itself or compared with other individuals. Because there is no internal difference and the whole lacks internal contradictions, it loses the motivation to move forward. When the whole country basically stops thinking, and the people, in turn, completely stick to the existing deformed culture and gradually become inert to the extreme, the country and the people will inevitably enter an irrational state. Especially unfortunately, the centralization of core ideas in culture interacts with the irrational countries dominated by it, forming a vicious circle. In this case, it is not surprising that anything absurd happens, and it may last for a long time. In the Song Dynasty, Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism was a realistic deduction of the above reasoning. Zhu's Neo-Confucianism and Cheng's theory of mind and nature are the further development of Confucianism, raising the golden mean to the height of heaven, and putting forward the idea of "observing heaven and destroying human desires" according to the principle of separation of Taoism and Taoism. This kind of thinking reflects the extreme disrespect for a dignified individual like human beings. When this thought becomes the mainstream ideology of the whole society, it is not surprising that the whole society ignores the suffering of women once the small feet become the standard to judge whether women are beautiful (in fact, it has risen to the standard of virtue and morality).

The Song Dynasty was a weak regime in China's dynasties. On the one hand, its territory is limited to the Central Plains and Jiangnan, and the region is basically Han nationality, so both regional culture and national culture are relatively single, which is conducive to the formation of an authoritative position of certain ideas in the country. During the Han and Tang dynasties, Chang 'an, the political and cultural center, was the intersection of Hu and Han cultures, because there was a desert in the western regions with complete limbs. This is why, although Emperor Wu of the Western Han Dynasty began to realize that Confucianism was a good medicine for ignorant rulers, and let Dong Zhongshu oust a hundred schools of thought, it did not lead to the totalitarian status of Confucianism in the society during the Han and Tang Dynasties. On the other hand, throughout the history of the Song regime, it has always been in a passive position in the battlefield with the minority regimes such as Jin, Liao and Xixia. There are also two voices in the imperial court, the main battle and the main peace, but the capitulators who advocate submission and tribute have always prevailed, and the royal family also tends to seek peace and security. However, this has increased the people's tax burden, people's living in poverty, and peasant uprisings are surging. The reason lies in this situation of internal and external troubles and the regime itself.

The core of Confucianism is the supremacy of morality, and the most basic moral norm is "the three cardinal guides and the five permanents". The three cardinal principles are that the monarch is the minister, the father is the son, the husband is the wife, and the five permanent principles are benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and faith. It can be seen that Confucianism is an idea of emphasizing order and shaping authority, and it is an idea of safeguarding imperial power and male power, which meets the needs of the regime at that time. Therefore, the rulers highly admire Confucianism, and thoroughly implement, strictly implement and vigorously develop Confucianism in their rule. Male power and imperial power belong to the category of totalitarianism and authoritarianism advocated by Confucianism and come down in one continuous line. With the authority of imperial power being further deified, the strong position of men relative to women is further enhanced, while the strong position of men relative to the weak position of women, that is, this more powerful position must be based on further reducing and weakening the status of women. What I want to mention here is that men in the Song Dynasty were relatively depressed and basically failed in foreign wars. In addition to macro factors such as national strength and military, there is another important reason. In the ancient battlefield, when the tactical level was close, the strength and wildness of soldiers were very important. In the Song Dynasty, the army was similar to the northern minorities in combat, but because the soldiers were basically Han Chinese and mostly Jiangnan people, their strength and wildness were obviously insufficient. On the battlefield, in a male-dominated society like Song Dynasty, men had an innate conceit about their own strength, but when this conceit was hit hard by their incompetence in defending the country, they had to instinctively find a way out to bear the broken dignity. Obviously, women are the most suitable targets. Ban Zhao, a talented woman in the Han Dynasty, once mentioned in the famous Women's Commandments: "Yin and Yang are different, and men and women are different. Yang takes rigidity as virtue, while Yin takes softness as energy. Men value strength and women value weakness. " It can be seen that in the history of China, the strength of men was essentially set off by the weakness of women. Therefore, it is inevitable that men at that time subconsciously forced women to move to a more vulnerable position, so as to find a balance for their lost self-esteem on the battlefield. After foot binding, women must walk lightly and twist their waist (so-called "Lian Bu Shanshan") to show weakness. Because they can't walk easily and casually, they can only stay at home and be a quiet wife and mother, which is in line with the order that the Song Dynasty regime longed for, advocated by the Confucian culture that gradually went to extremes at that time, and secretly catered to a common psychological demand among men at that time. Therefore, the proliferation of female foot-binding behavior in Song Dynasty was determined by the extremely abnormal macro-social situation and cultural atmosphere at that time.

The most reasonable explanation is that since the Song Dynasty, extreme Confucianism, that is, Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism, has always occupied the dominant position in society. The inheritance of this social macro concept from generation to generation is realized through fresh individuals. In the final analysis, the continuation of Zhu Cheng's Neo-Confucianism is the comprehensive result of the choices of spiritual people from generation to generation. What a man-made tragedy this is. 1At the end of the 9th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the development of the international situation and frequent exchanges at home and abroad, the wind of western civilization gradually blew in China, and intellectuals took the lead in awakening, and began to actively publicize the ideas of western factions, reflect on some shortcomings of Chinese traditional culture, and gradually spread to the whole society. Under the influence of this multicultural atmosphere, the social trend of thought was very active at that time, and people began to really and rationally examine their unreasonable customs and habits bound by ethics. So, naturally, I cut the man's long braid and covered the woman's feet. However, the pain and shame of China women's Millennium foot-binding cannot be erased from our history with a single stroke. Only by deeply reflecting on history can we overcome ignorance and follow the footsteps of history.