My follow-up to the clone book was Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. How good was this book? Really, really good. It was a really good read, but was also good in the way that makes you so thankful that you were not born and raised in ancient China. Why, you ask?
The footbinding, oh the footbinding!
“To that end, my goal was to achieve a pair of perfectly bound feet with seven distinct attributes: They should be small, narrow, straight, pointed, and arched, yest still fragrant and soft in texture. Of these requirements, length is the most important. Seven centimeters-about the length of a thumb-is the ideal,”.
Above are some diagrams of a regular foot versus a bound foot above it.
Allow me to list some measurements that I took myself with a tape measure specifically to show you just how small this actually is:
Moaning Myrtle (the iphone, not the ghost): 11cm
Bathroom bar of soap: 8 cm
The spacebar on Neville Longbottom (my laptop): 9.5 cm
The book this blog is about: 13 cm (wide)
My left thumb (from bottom of knuckle to top of nail): 7 cm
How do they do this you might ask? Well, the mothers would wrap fabric around the feet of their little girls (7-8 years old) tight enough that when they walked on these feet the bones in their toes would break so that over time the toes could be bent back under the foot until they are under the heel. Only the big toe is not broken or bound. As someone who has broken her pinky toes multiple times, I have no words for how much this would hurt.
On top of the hurt is the smell and infection. As your toes bend back toward your heel the skin in between which is normally open to air slowly gets hot, then breaks down, then starts to decay and gets infected. 1 in 10 of the little girls would die from the footbinding process.
You are all welcome for this buzz-kill of a blog. Oops. But at least it was educational.
