By: Nichole Torgerson

The act or practice of tightly binding feet of infant girls to keep the feet as small as possible.

The purpose of foot binding is to determine class identity and status. If the girls didn’t have small feet and they were trying to find a husband, then it would be impossible for them. The pain that the girls had to feel was intense. The pain was so bad that they could not even walk short distances without help. Because the binding was so painful, it forced the girls to stay put and not wander off.

The first thing the mother does is bend her daughter’s feet in half, so every toe besides the big toe are to their arches and heels. Then the mothers sew the bindings around the girl’s feet to keep them bent in half. The next thing they do is wrap them in cloth to keep them positioned right. (They rewrap their feet every couple days to keep the bindings clean) Once the bindings are completed, the mothers force the girls to walk on their feet until they break their toes. Once the girl’s toes are finally broken, they are force to walk longer on their feet, so they can get used to the feeling of having sore and broken feet. The full process of foot binding takes about two to three years.

The tradition of foot binding lasted well over one thousand years. Foot binding was outlawed when the Machu Dynasty was over thrown in 1911, and when the New Republic started.

The average length of a girls foot after the foot binding process was approximately three inches. If a girl had three inch feet then, she would be given the title of “san tsun gin lian,” which in English means golden lotus, or lily. When the foot binding process is completed, the foot should look like an extension of the leg. It was the mothers responsibility to administer the foot binding process on their daughters.

In the book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan there are two main characters, one of them is named Lily and she has to go through the process of getting her feet bound. Lily is seven years old, which is the average age to put foot bindings on young Asian girls. Bindings are put on Asian girls between the ages of three to eleven. It was Lily and her two sisters that got their foot bindings done at the same time. However her third sister was to scared to get it hers done. Unfortunately one of the sisters died after her bindings were put on because she developed an infection in her leg. Although the process of foot binding was painful and seemed unfair, Lily was fortunate to end up with perfectly formed, small feet and she reached high marriage status.