The custom of female foot-binding in China began in the late Tang Dynasty, which was several centuries later than Confucianism in the Han Dynasty. According to historical records, the initiator was Li Houzhu, the emperor who died in the late Tang Dynasty. He is addicted to wine and color, and he appreciates the way a woman with little feet walks. Since then, the custom of women's foot-binding has spread.
Foot-binding became a common practice in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, and it was banned twice in the second year of Shunzhi and the third year of Kangxi in the Qing Dynasty. But in the end, the traditional habits were not used to it, and even the women in the Qing Dynasty were sinicized and put on thin golden lotus. This situation shows that the traditional female foot-binding is not the instruction of the rulers, let alone the norms of Confucian ethics.
The Book of Changes is a divination "Biography of Elephants": "Heaven is healthy, and gentlemen are constantly striving for self-improvement." It means that "the sky" moves with its sun, moon and stars day after day, year after year, and never stops, showing great energy and vigorous strength. Generally used to refer to the social image orientation of men. Biography of Zhouyi Kun Gua Xiang Zhuan "The terrain is Kun, and a gentleman carries things with virtue." It means "the earth" carries and nourishes everything with its boundless bosom. Generally used to refer to women's social image orientation. "Heaven" and "Earth" are the two biggest images in nature. According to "Cohesion", "Heaven and earth are big, and life is also." According to this theory of complementary yin and yang, a woman's physical injury also affects her children's health and the population quality of the nation.
For example, Old Master Q, a philosopher in the Southern Song Dynasty, and Cheng Yi, Henan Province, did not let women at home bind their feet when they were alive; After his death, his family respected his ancestral teachings and never allowed women to bind their feet. In the history of Ming and Qing Dynasties, the government ordered women not to bind their feet many times, and emperors also married women who did not bind their feet, especially Ma Huanghou, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty. Ma Huanghou himself did not bind his feet. He personally instructed imperial training as a teaching material for girls' schools to regulate women's behavior. Zhu Yuanzhang even wrote a letter forbidding foot binding. However, repeated orders did not solve the problem. Later, the Qing government had to ban Manchu women from foot-binding, fearing that Manchu women would be influenced by Han women and foot-binding would damage their health. Therefore, it is necessary to make an in-depth analysis of the traditional female foot-binding phenomenon today. It is worth analyzing whether the ethical code destroys women or the poison of the secular beauty standard concocted by popular culture.
During Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang years, why did the prohibition of foot-binding be reiterated many times, and the peak of foot-binding in China history was in the Qing Dynasty? It is not enough to explain this phenomenon only by beauty. "Women don't travel from boudoir." It should be said that the Han people "carried forward" the wind of foot binding in the Qing Dynasty in order to resist the Manchu Dynasty and safeguard the "integrity" and personality of the Han people. In the early years of the Qing Dynasty, anyone who wanted to respond to the "benevolent government" of the new dynasty and play the role of women might be suspected of being a "traitor", which is recorded in these historical books.
In addition, when it comes to foot binding, it is the beauty of small feet, which is probably similar to the popular beauty pageant at present, and it seems to be similar to modern women wearing high heels. Fashion women like self-destructive behaviors such as breast augmentation and slimming. For example, the novel A Dream of Red Mansions describes a typical upper-class family with strict feudal ethics, in which there are many female images and almost no description of how to bind feet. There are almost no descriptions of female foot-binding scenes in China's classical texts. It is not difficult to draw such a conclusion that the phenomenon of "little-footed girl" in China's history originated from the influence of popular culture, which is the product of a folk aesthetic standard and can also be said to be a folk custom. By the end of the Qing Dynasty, with the appeal of more and more people of insight and the deepening of women's liberation movement, the bad habit of foot-binding began to be eliminated in the Republic of China.