The man behind the foot-binding habit

 

The man behind the foot-binding habit

 

When the storm is at its most violent, it also heralds the end. When the foot-binding trend is at its craziest, it heralds the end of an ugly and corrupt dynasty. Only after nine hundred years of foot-binding torture can Chinese women understand the meaning of liberating their feet and humanity, and can they bravely and proudly face this complex and dirty society independently.

Agudengba hated the foot-binding custom in China's feudal society. When he sat with A Zhuo and Chu Sanxing and chatted about the bad habit of foot-binding among women in ancient China, the conversation was directed at the great Confucian scholars in China.

Agudenba said:

Why was foot binding so popular in the Song Dynasty? Who was behind it? You may not have imagined that the driving force behind this was actually Zhu Xi, a great scholar of the generation.

Zhu Xi was born on September 15, 1130, and his nickname was Shen Lang. When Zhu Xi was born, he had seven black moles on the corner of his right eye, arranged like a Big Dipper.

Zhu Xi is the most famous philosopher, thinker, educator, poet and writer with outstanding achievements in the late feudal society of China. He gathered together the great achievements of Neo-Confucianism since the Northern Song Dynasty and even the academic thoughts of Confucius and later, and created a broad and profound philosophical thought system, which had a very significant impact on the society of China and Southeast Asia for more than 700 years after the Southern Song Dynasty.

Zhu Xi is the only person who is not a direct disciple of Confucius and is worshiped in the Confucius Temple. He is one of the twelve philosophers in Dacheng Hall. He is a student of Li Tong, a third disciple of "Er Cheng". Zhu Xi's philosophical system is based on the theory of "Er Cheng" and is formed by absorbing Zhou Dunyi's theory of Tai Chi, Zhang Zai's theory of Qi and Buddhism and Taoism. Together with the "Er Cheng" theory, it is called "Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism". His thoughts had a great influence on the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and became the official philosophy of the three dynasties. He has profound knowledge and noble personality. After Confucius, he is another oriental cultural sage who has made great contributions to the history of human thought.

Agudumba said angrily:

This great Confucian who spoke of benevolence, righteousness and morality was the driving force and historical sinner behind the scenes who advocated foot-binding, promoted the bad habit of foot-binding, and harmed Chinese women.

Regarding Zhu Xi's advocacy of foot binding, it is clearly recorded in "Customs of China": "Zhangzhou women all have small feet and must rely on a stick to walk. Whenever there is a funeral, the women will go. Each one holds a stick. , gathered together to form a forest. In the early days of the folk custom, there were many promiscuous people. When Zhu Wengong was guarding Zhang, he legislated the binding of feet to a minimum, which made it difficult for people to walk, so he changed the custom and became the phenomenon today."

In the Song Dynasty, Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism could be said to be the mainstream values at that time. Especially after Zhu Xi advocated the morbid beauty of foot binding, many women followed suit, and men also listed small feet as one of the beauty standards when choosing a mate. Under the influence of this morbid value system, more and more women have foot binding.

Unlike the West, China did not regard the body as an aesthetic object in its early civilization. For the first time in Chinese history, the body was scrutinized, viewed, and appreciated in a cultural type. This was a new aesthetic change resulting from the cultural transformation of the Song Dynasty. Sima Guang said in "On the Sumo Wrestling Forms of Women in Shangyuan Ling" that "making women play naked in front of them is definitely not to show the etiquette and show the four directions." This is a tradition that does not take the body as an aesthetic object and treats the body to a certain extent. Surprise and opposition from the socio-cultural front.

The body is not a purely physiological existence that is born, but also a social and cultural phenomenon constructed by tradition and society. In addition to female foot binding, there was also a typical body construction behavior in the Song Dynasty, which was male tattooing. Ruhua monk Lu Zhishen and Jiuzhilong Shijin are both famous men with tattoos. Both of these behaviors are caused by the body entering the aesthetic field during this period. Foot binding and tattoos are important means to reshape the body in addition to clothing and make the body more "beautiful". The only difference between the two is that footbinding conforms to the transformation of the female body in a patriarchal society.

Agudemba continued:

We know that Li Yu ordered Yao Niang to have her feet bound so that her dancing posture would look better. The people who first imitated her also did so because of her dancing "whirlwinds like flying clouds" after binding her feet. That is to say, the beauty of foot binding lies in the fact that women's posture becomes more graceful after binding. This is still traditional. The aesthetic appreciation of the graceful and graceful figure of women.

Men praise foot binding, believing that foot binding makes women slimmer and more beautiful, as evidenced by the poetry of the Song Dynasty. Naturally, products related to small feet have also become a symbol of beauty. A pair of shoes, a pair of socks, a belt, and a piece of silk, all of them have transcendent beauty, including soft skin, smooth skin, jade toes, and beautiful wrists. This is the reason why shoes and socks appeared frequently in Song Dynasty people's writings. He Zhu even used bow shoes to pour wine and drink: "Don't hate the fragrant mash and pour embroidered shoes, vomiting wormwood is also a romantic thing"; Yang Wujiu also "cleverly stole" other people's bow shoes to use for drinking.

Men in the Song Dynasty spared no effort to praise their small feet, which was tantamount to promoting foot binding. This is the choice faced by women in the Song Dynasty: if you want to pursue fashionable beauty, this is beauty! Just like women today who want to wear high heels, have breast augmentation, or have plastic surgery, they have no choice. In this way, it was precisely in the name of beauty that foot binding evolved from an initial artistic practice in the Song Dynasty to a social fashion, and then evolved into folk customs and etiquette in later generations.

Agudumba explained:

Generally speaking, the foot-binding culture in the Song Dynasty was just a product of the morbid aesthetics of the upper class. It was similar to the waist corset in Western Europe and today's breast augmentation fashion.

At first, foot binding was also called "foot binding" or "foot binding". In the Northern Song Dynasty, the bound feet were also called the famous Luoyang peony and Jianzhou tea. It can be seen that the foot binding style in Shenzong and Zhezong dynasties has become a popular practice. The pursuit of "high-end" fashion. At the end of Xuanhe period of Emperor Huizong, women's shoes had pointed soles made of two colors, which were called "Caogui". This kind of shoes was the bow shoes worn by women with bound feet, which was more popular; at the same time, there was also "Thin Golden Lotus Fang". Moreover, foot binding at this time only bound women's feet to be slim and straight, which was called "quickly mount the horse". It was not the perverted "three-inch golden lotus" in the Ming and Qing Dynasties.

It can be inferred that foot-binding behavior had a tendency to spread further in the late Northern Song Dynasty. By the Southern Song Dynasty, there were more and more people binding their feet.

"Mengliang Lu" written in the 10th year of Emperor Duzong's reign in Xianchun records that the small boat on the West Lake in Hangzhou that "carried only Jia Ke, prostitutes" and others was named "small foot boat". The small feet are used to describe the boat, so women's bound feet must be used as human beings. Learned knowledge.

The two actresses in "Zaju Tu" and the female images in "Soushan Tu" by an unknown painter in the late Southern Song Dynasty all wear bow shoes and are women with bound feet; the Tomb of Zhou in De'an, Jiangxi, Huang Sheng's Tomb in Fuzhou, and the Anonymous Tomb in Gaochun, Jiangsu during the Southern Song Dynasty The tomb owners are also women with bound feet. Mutual evidence from the literature also shows that footbinding was relatively common in the Southern Song Dynasty.

What is even more absurd is that "Huhai News Yi Jian Xu Zhi" records: There was a man named Wang Qianyi during the reign of Ning Zong. His father made him "pretend to be a woman, pierce her ears, bind her feet, and paint her like a woman" since he was a child. If you want your son to dress up like a woman, of course you have to follow the example of a "standard woman". In addition to "painting," you also have to "pierce your ears and bind your feet." The image of the "standard woman" in the King's father's mind was obviously the image of ordinary women with bound feet that he saw.

Agudengba took a sip of Burmese milk tea and continued to explain:

In the early Southern Song Dynasty, Chen Liang said in a letter to Zhu Xi: "A certain stubborn person is just like this, wandering day by day and wandering around with his descendants, just like an ugly girl in her thirties or forties, who even wants to tie her waist and tie her feet. This is not only ridiculous, but also good. Also." The word "more desire" clearly indicates that foot binding should have started in childhood during the Southern Song Dynasty. If the foot binding time is advanced, it will inevitably cause greater harm to the child's natural feet. But Zhu Xi, the man behind the idea of footbinding, didn't care.

However, Che Ruoshui, a disciple of Zhu Xi, a great Confucian scholar of the Southern Song Dynasty, complained about this. Che Ruoshui said in his "Athology of Beriberi", "I don't know when the woman's feet were bound, and the child was not four or five years old, innocent and innocent, and caused infinite pain. I don't know what use it is to bind a young child?" This should be the earliest accusation against the bad practice of foot-binding in Chinese history and the voice against foot-binding.

The great scholar Zhu Xi lost his father when he was young and settled with his mother in Chong'an, which is now Wuyishan City, Fujian Province. Zhu Xi lived with his father and friend Liu Ziyu, and was educated by Hu Xian, Liu Mianzhi and Liu Zihui. In the 18th year of Shaoxing (1148), he was born as a Jinshi. He served as an official in the four dynasties of Gaozong, Xiaozong, Guangzong and Ningzong. He once served as the prefect of Nankang in Jiangxi, Zhangzhou in Fujian, and governor of eastern Zhejiang. He served as the minister and lecturer of Huanzhang Pavilion and gave lectures to Ningzong of the Song Dynasty. Later, because he was worried about the recurrence of his maternal relatives' monopoly, he used the opportunity of giving lectures to attack Han Yuzhou, who was his maternal relatives, many times. However, Han Yuzhou was supported by Ning Zong and dismissed Zhu Xi from his post.

In the second year of Qingyuan (1196), Shen Jizu, the supervisory censor, impeached Zhu Xi for using false learning to deceive others, and criticized him as the "leader of false learning", and listed six major crimes. Zhu Xi was dismissed from his post for the crime of pseudo-study, and returned to Jianyang to lecture and write. In the sixth year of Qingyuan (1200), Zhu Xi died at home, and his posthumous title was Wen. Zhu Xi's life was not brilliant.

  When people today mention foot binding, the image of a pair of deformed feet with bulging insteps, broken arches, and muscle atrophy comes to mind.

If people today read more about foot-binding poems and phrases written by ancient Chinese literati who integrate Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism, their imagination will be opened up:

 

Do you know what it looks like? It looks like a crescent moon with light green cage clouds.

——Shi Hao and Liu Guo's "Qinyuanchun·Beautiful Feet"

 

She has a beautiful face and narrow shoes.

——Qin Guan's "Man Jiang Hong" "Huaihai Jushi's Notes and Supplements on Long and Short Sentences"

 

Fiber shoes and narrow socks. Hong Yin calls herself Pipa Pai.

Three thousand pearls and shoes are skillfully matched with beauty, but the bow is narrow and can only be moved.

Lianbu embroidered shoes are narrow.

——Guan Jian's "Good Things Come Soon"

 

The golden shoes are small.

——Zhang Xian's "Congratulations to the Holy Dynasty"

 

The socks are narrow and the shoes are small. Wen Yuan and Ying Ying are both good.

——Xiangzi's "Bodhisattva Man"

 

The phoenix shoe bow is nicknamed Pingting.

——Cai Shen's "Huanxi Sand"

 

Golden lotus lining, small Lingboluo socks.

——Tian Wei's "Jiang Shen Zi Man"

 

The undergarment is cold and the stockings are golden lotus.

——Chen Yunping's "Early Plum Blossom"

 

In the late Southern Song Dynasty, the purpose of women's foot binding in the Song Dynasty was still to make the feet narrower but not excessively "small", so it did not unduly affect the freedom of movement of women with bound feet. However, foot-binding emerged and spread in the Song Dynasty. By the Qing Dynasty, it had evolved into the "three-inch golden lotus" foot-binding style. It was under the exaggeration of ancient Chinese Confucians that footbinding has a history of nine hundred years, and has even been incorporated into traditional Chinese folk culture. The memory left to us is actually the filthiness of Confucian scholars and intellectuals and the insult and harm to women.

  After understanding Zhu Xi’s advocacy of footbinding, I actually also understood the story behind the benevolence, righteousness and morality promoted by Chinese great Confucianists.

  Agudengba impromptuly sang "Foot-Binding Mantra":

 

 

There are many stories behind foot binding;

The great scholar Zhu Xi was the pusher.

Foot binding has been a bad practice for nine hundred years.

The sour rhetoric never ceases.

 

The clouds on the temples are falling slantingly, and the lotus steps are thin,

The embroidered bow shoes are slightly exposed at the bottom of the skirt.

For whom do the phoenix shoes and golden lotus bow?

Both the government and the public are stinking beautiful.

 

The insteps of a pair of bound feet are bulging,

The arch of the foot is broken into a deformity.

Slim and crescent-shaped,

The muscles of the lower feet have atrophied.

 

Recalling the past and thinking about the present, who regrets it?

It was praised constantly in the Tang, Song, Ming and Qing dynasties.

The three-inch golden lotus has been abandoned,

Wear trendy high heels.