Aching For Beauty: Footbinding in China - Hardcover

Wang Ping

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0816636052 ISBN 13: 9780816636051

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2000

Synopsis

A fascinating and haunting exploration of the bound foot in Chinese culture.

Why did so many Chinese women over a thousand-year period bind their feet, enduring rotting flesh, throbbing pain, and hampered mobility throughout their lives? What compelled mothers to bind the feet of their young daughters, forcing the girls to walk about on their doubled-over limbs to achieve the breakage of bones requisite for three-inch feet? Why did Chinese men find women’s "golden lotuses"-stench and all-so arousing, inspiring beauty contests for feet, thousands of poems, and erotica in which bound, silk-slippered feet were fetishized and lusted after?

As a child growing up during the Cultural Revolution, Wang Ping fantasized about binding her own feet and tried to restrict their growth by wrapping them in elastic bandages. Even though footbinding was not practiced by every woman in late Imperial China, the aesthetic, financial, and erotic advantages of footbinding permeated all aspects of language, ranging from erotic poetry, novels, and performances to food writing, myths, folk songs and ditties, and secret women’s writing, some of it hidden in embroidery. In Aching for Beauty, Wang interprets the mystery of footbinding as part of a womanly heritage-"a roaring ocean current of female language and culture."

She also shows that footbinding should not be viewed merely as a function of men’s oppression of women, but rather as a phenomenon of male and female desire deeply rooted in traditional Chinese culture. Written in an elegant and powerful style, and filled with personal, intriguing, and sometimes paradoxical insights, Aching for Beauty builds bridges from the past to the present, East to West, history to literature, imagination to reality.

About this title

About the Author

Wang Ping, born in Shanghai, came to the United States in 1985. Her books include short stories, American Visa (1994); a novel, Foreign Devil (1996); and poetry, Of Flesh and Spirit (1998). She also edited and cotranslated New Generation: Poems from China Today (1999). She has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from New York University and teaches creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Reviews

The earliest mention of foot binding in Chinese history may date to the 21st century B.C., when the founder of the Xia dynasty was said to have married a "fox fairy with tiny feet." Practiced by royal women and their courtiers since approximately the 11th century A.D., foot binding was eventually taken up by commoners as well, with all classes striving to achieve three-inch "lotus feet." The "breaking process" began for girls between the ages of five and seven, "when their bones were still flexible" and they were "mature enough" to comprehend the importance of the practice. Novelist (Foreign Devil), short story writer (American Visa) and poet (Of Flesh and Spirit), Ping illustrates that the two-year rite of passage not only introduced young girls to pain (it involved breaking bones and "peeling... rotten flesh") but also initiated them into a "permanent bonding with [their] mother[s] and female ancestors," shaped in part by the difficulty of communicating pain through words. Ping, who has a Ph.D. in comparative literature, looks to language and literature in examining the deep cultural and power structures involved in this agonizing tradition. Referencing such heavy-hitting theorists as Derrida, Lacan and Foucault, Ping's prolific source notes also attest to an intriguing variety of sourcesAfrom Eve Ensler's hip and contemporary The Vagina Monologues to the remote Ming History of 1739. Although her language can be rather stiff and academic, Ping's spirited study should appeal to those intrigued by the mysterious link between violence and beauty. Photos. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book describes the chilling and tragic history of beauty via footbinding in China that began around the 11th century, flourished in the Ming Dynasty, and was eclipsed in the Qing Dynasty in 1911. The author, whose impulse as a child in China was to bind her own feet, first wrote a doctoral dissertation at New York University on the subject of footbinding as represented in Chinese literature. Parts of this book are for the general reader interested in this subject, but substantial portions read like a doctoral dissertation and can only be appreciated by the literary scholar or women's studies specialist. The thesis of the book-that beauty in China is created through sheer violence-has great representation in China's historic erotic literature, including Li Yu's The Carnal Prayer Mat and Han Daguo's The Golden Lotus. The book is a stark contrast to Notable Women of China (LJ 5/1/00), which barely mentions footbinding, but complements The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History (LJ 2/15/99), which discusses footbinding as a symbol of a China overrun by economic and sexual extravagance. Recommended primarily for university libraries with specialized collections in Chinese literature and women's studies.
Peggy Spitzer Christoff, Oak Park, IL
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816636052
• ISBN 13: 9780816636051
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320