The Three-Inch Golden Lotus: A Novel on Foot Binding

Tells the story of Fragrant Lotus, whose feet were bound in the Grand Lotus style when she was six years old and now enable her to marry into a wealthy family

In his intriguing 1985 novel, Feng explores complex topics (such as the troubled relationship between truth and falsehood and the dangers of overzealous attempts at social reform) primarily through Chinese foot binding, the traditional practice of breaking a young girl's feet and tightly wrapping them so that they remain only three inches long. Set in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the story follows Fragrant Lotus, a poor girl whose superbly bound feet bring her to the attention of Tong Ren-an. A dealer in antiques and a bound-foot fetishist, he selects his daughters-in-law by the excellence of their feet. In the household, competition for power is fierce; dominance goes to the woman judged by Tong's friends to have the best feet. Fragrant Lotus masters the "rules, skills, tricks" of caring for her most valuable asset, but when Tong dies and reform is in the air, she must learn new skills to battle the Natural Foot Society--which calls for women to unbind their feet, a painful process--and to confront her own secret relationship with this group's leader. An afterword by Wakefield, who teaches Chinese history at the University of Missouri, provides some context for the nonspecialist.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In the tradition of Swift, contemporary Chinese writer Feng Jicai (Chrysanthemums, 1985) critiques Chinese society by focusing on the grotesque as he tells the story of one family's obsession with bound feet--the perfect ``three-inch golden lotuses'' of tradition. Slyly observing that the idea ``that a portion of Chinese history lies concealed in the bound feet of Chinese women [is] preposterous,'' the narrator proceeds to demonstrate that ``when you're really into the story you can't tell the difference between the truth and lies.'' Set in a small town in the early 1900's, the novel examines these lies and truths as--exemplified in the Tong family--they reflect Chinese attitudes to social change, sex, and to individuality. The head of the Tong family, a noted antiques dealer, has a special regard, shared by like-minded friends, for the perfect bound foot. These men debate the history of foot- binding, argue the finer points, and hold contests to determine the smallest feet in various families. When Tong glimpses the exquisite feet of Fragrant Lotus, a girl of humble origins whose feet had been bound--the process is graphically described--by her grandmother to assure a good marriage, he has her marry one of his loutish sons. Her arrival in the household provokes jealousies as the women scheme to display their own feet and win accolades. Fragrant Lotus soon gives birth to a daughter who mysteriously disappears just as her feet are about to be bound. The years pass, and Fragrant Lotus, now the family head, finds herself defending tradition as she battles the Natural Foot Society, led by the beautiful Pretty Flower. A superficially whimsical and picaresque tale of old Chinese society, luminously evoked, but with a deadly serious underlying subject that gives it a sobering edge. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Feng creates a world that revolves around the fine art of foot binding, the ultimate being the perfect, three-inch-long "golden lotus." Young Fragrant Lotus's perfect golden lotuses take her from her impoverished orphanhood to the leading house in Tianjin in the 1890s to the 1930s. Here, idle rich men appreciate aesthetically and erotically both the most beautiful paintings and the smallest feet and vie with one another to seek out particularly fine examples of each. Alternately horrifying and humorous, fantastic and realistic, erotic and chaste, vague and detailed, this tale is thoroughly engrossing in itself. However, it also serves as an allegory for the political situation in modern China, where a few powerful people for capricious reasons control the destinies of many helpless people. Feng is one of China's most famous, versatile, and inventive modern writers but is hardly known in the West. He deserves more translations such as this able one.
- Kitty Chen Dean, Nassau Coll., Garden City, N.Y.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Feng Jicai is an extraordinary writer and thinker wildly popular in China but relatively unknown outside it. His title refers to the ideal size of the "golden lotus," i.e., the bound foot, revered as the perfection of feminine beauty and sexual desirability. Feng builds his story around foot binding, which was not eradicated until the mid-twentieth century. Through the story of a single family, he recounts both foot binding's horrors--e.g., small girls' feet wrapped until every bone breaks and intentionally infected by inserting shards of glass under the bandages to induce completely new skin to form when the infections heal--and the new horrors that came when foot binding was outlawed and suddenly what was beautiful became ugly. Using this story as a metaphor for China's changes during the Cultural Revolution, Feng brilliantly exposes the implications of political change for the individual and provides insight into both Chinese history and the Chinese mindset. Mary Ellen Sullivan