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Minimalist Shoes - Chinese style

Discussion in 'General Issues and Discussion Forum' started by Mark Russell, Sep 9, 2011.

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    Had a nice interesting gift from a patient today of a pair of bespoke shoes for the bound foot. A new take on the minimalist fad that's fashionable in some parts of the world today.... This is the adult size. In the first photograph, the white shoe is a ladies UK size 4.
     

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  2. Suzannethefoot

    Suzannethefoot Active Member

    Those poor women! Very pretty shoes and interesting to look at, but I would hate to have fitted into them.
     
  3. jane.e.benson

    jane.e.benson Active Member

    I hope the date was 1891, but women will still try and wear shoes too small even nowadays!
     
  4. SarahR

    SarahR Active Member

    A colleague has a patient with bound feet, many of these women are still alive. The practice continued in rural places even after it lost favor. Indeed manufacture for purposes of wearing only stopped in 1998 in China! Some places still custom make them, plus decorative souvenirs are being made. Most women stopped binding with bandages long ago and their feet are larger than typical bound feet but still damaged.

    Sarah
     
  5. I'm sure Cameron (toeslayer) will enlighten more than I, but you may be interested to know that one of the reasons chinese bound feet was that it became a favoured form of contraception long before condoms made their entry (so to speak) in the market.
     
  6. Suzannethefoot

    Suzannethefoot Active Member

    Erm......how exactly?:confused:
     
  7. Cameron

    Cameron Well-Known Member

    netizens

    Beverly Jackson has written several books on the subject of bound feet Splendid Slippers is a good place to start http://www.splendidslippers.com/thebook.html

    The lotus is an emblem representative of the vagina and highly arch feet (caused through foot binding) could cup the male member for masturbation purposes. When you examine the original Lotus shoes and put the soles together you see a clear lotus outline. The custom of footbinding started in the 11th century.

    Chinese women had literally hundreds of pairs of delicate shoes and provided the feet remained bound and they wore the shoes they could could move effortlessly. Unfortunatley when the Christian Missionaries tried to stop foot binding the adults were crippled when encouraged to unbind their feet.

    The end of footbinding came with the 1912 Revolution when the privilage classes were identified by women with bound feet and Mao made foot binding illegal.

    The Communists have until recently been very cagey about the history of foot binding but have now allowed a better understanding of the custom. No authority is absolutley sure of the origins but one credible theory is the custom was associated with safe sex at a time when STDs were rife.

    Footbinding historically corresponds to the occidental shoe phenomenon of the poulaines (long toed shoes). These shoes were 24" longer than the foot and when filled with moss and grass were used as phalic batons (for safe sex). The fashion in Europe lasted four hundred years before it disappeared entirely at the beginning of the 15th century. This happens to correspond in with the major syphis epidemics which devestated Europe after the discovery of North America. The Bears Paw or very broad footwear replaced the poulaine almost instantly and one possible explanation to explain this extra ordinary event is the prevelence of charcot feet and the need to encase them in moon boots.

    For more on the topic have a swizz
    http://foottalk.blogspot.com/2007/12/most-curious-history-of-orthopaedic.html


    Fascinating topic
    toeslayer
     
  8. Cameron

    Cameron Well-Known Member

    netizens

    New movie which features footbinding
    Sunflower and the secret fan

    http://youtu.be/6wlk7TsdhsY

    A beautifully made movie set in Shanghai and based on Lisa See's 1995 novel. It tells the story of two seven-year-old girls, Snow Flower (Gianna Yun) and Lily (Bingbing Li) who on the 19th century are matched as laotong ("old sames") , and bound together for eternity. Furtively they communicate by taking turns writing in a secret language (nu shu), between the folds of a white silk fan. In a parallel story in present day Shanghai, the laotong's descendants, Nina (Bingbing Li) and Sophia (Gianna Yun), struggle to maintain the intimacy of their own childhood friendship in the face of demanding careers, complicated love lives, and a relentlessly evolving Shanghai. Just as Snowflower and Lily faced footbinding, so too Nina and Sophia contend with the constraints of modern life. Drawing on the lessons of the past, the two modern women must understand the story of their ancestral connection, hidden from them in the folds of the antique white silk fan, or risk losing one another forever. Rather slow and complicated to follow but a joy to watch.

    Enjoy
    toeslayer
     
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