Foot binding in the Southern Song Dynasty

 

Foot binding in the Southern Song Dynasty

 

If a woman fills her life veins with the desire to stand out from the beginning, she is doomed to struggle in the mud of ugliness throughout her life. The reason why young women are particularly easily tempted by all kinds of bizarre things, such as their obsession with foot binding, is often because their personalities have not yet become independent, which distorts their sense of aesthetics. Agudengba, Adhuo and Chu Sanxing drank Burmese milk tea and sat under a big tree and talked about the foot-binding trend that was crazy during the Southern Song Dynasty in China.

The wise Agudumba said:

Before the Northern Song Dynasty, the social atmosphere was generally relatively open. Although the idea of favoring boys over girls always existed, the constraints on women were not serious. The most typical phenomenon was the phenomenon of remarriage. It was not until the Southern Song Dynasty that when Neo-Confucianism became popular, the thoughts and ideas about women Only then did the physical restraints begin to become more severe.

After the "Jingkang Disaster" broke out, Princess Roufu of the Song Dynasty was taken captive to the north. A few years later, in the fourth year of Jianyan of the Southern Song Dynasty (1130), another Princess Roufu suddenly appeared in the Song Dynasty. She claimed to be from the Jin Dynasty. Returned from abroad. Although she was able to answer many secrets in the palace, because she was born with a pair of natural feet and did not have bound feet, people suspected that she was not the real Princess Roufu. She then explained that she had walked thousands of miles to escape, which resulted in her bound feet returning to their original shape.

In the late Northern Song Dynasty, a large number of Han women, including women from Northern Song clan clans, were brutally ravaged. However, instead of stimulating the fighting spirit of all social strata, this caused all strata of society to pay attention to women's chastity, which was then integrated into Neo-Confucianism and became Since the Southern Song Dynasty, women's psychology and physiology have been greatly restricted.

The wise Agudumba said:

Different from the previous "foot-binding" for aesthetic reasons, the "foot-binding" in the Southern Song Dynasty was to restrict women's movement and to restrain women at home so that they could "not go out or step out", thus imprisoning women in the house. Within a certain range, avoid being exposed easily.

It is precisely because of the change in nature that as Neo-Confucianism became widely accepted, the custom of "foot-binding" began to spread rapidly. For example, the "Women's Education Chapter" stipulates for women: "Do not go out of the middle door, do not peek into holes, and do not cross walls." Another example is what is said in "The Daughter's Sutra": "Why are the feet bound? Not because they look good, but because they are as bow-shaped as a bow; lest she lightly walk out of the room and be restrained by thousands of wraps."

Agudenba explained:

It can be seen that even in the early Southern Song Dynasty, the bad habit of "foot binding" was not yet popular among the people, but the royal princesses had their feet bound. In this regard, "History of the Song Dynasty·Five Elements Chronicles" states "In the Lizong Dynasty, the palace servants tied their feet with slender legs"; in "Bodhisattva Man·Yong Foot" Su Shi called the small feet "gong-like", and Cao Yuanchong called them "gong-like" in his poems. "Official style" all show that "foot binding" started from the palace and gradually spread to the people.

Since the late Northern Song Dynasty and the early Southern Song Dynasty, the custom of foot-binding has begun to spread from the palace to the people. For example, when the Jin Kingdom destroyed the Northern Song Dynasty, they took pleasure in obtaining foot-bound women when fighting the Song army. This is recorded in "Jin Yu Lu" "Jin Wushu Lue (plundered) Su...the women over thirty and under thirty who had not bound their feet and those who had given birth were all killed", leaving only the young and childless women with bound feet.

According to Gao Hongxing's "History of Foot-Binding", many historical materials prove that foot-binding originated in the late Northern Song Dynasty, and the custom of foot-binding emerged in the Southern Song Dynasty. In the Southern Song Dynasty, the custom of foot binding developed. Judging from the pictures, more women wore bow shoes during the Southern Song Dynasty. The women's feet in the "Soushan Picture" and "Mixed Figures" collected by the Palace Museum in Beijing are very small. In archeology, foot-binding shoes worn by women in the Southern Song Dynasty have also been found. By the late Southern Song Dynasty, small feet had become a common name for women.

Under Agudengba's explanation, Azhuo and Chu Sanxing gained some knowledge about the foot-binding style of the Southern Song Dynasty.

  Agudengba impromptu sang "Tear Off the Foot Wraps":

 

Life is like a cicada,

Need to go through transformation again and again,

Absurd bad habits are not abandoned in time,

The vitality of life will be suppressed.

 

The bad habit of foot binding,

It needs to be completely abolished from top to bottom.

Tear off the long and smelly foot wrap,

Only women can stand firm.