Footbinding

Where Footbinding Existed

In order for the borders of the Chinese nation to be kept strong clothing was changed and used to represent China. It is therefore reasonable to think that footbinding must have been stronger in the northern parts of China were borderlines were constantly being battled for rather than in the south. Due to the large size of China and its geographically different landscapes and weather from North to South we see unique differences between footbinding practice. You can see this from the map of China representing the distribution of footbinding practiced. Indeed footbinding was much more prevalent in the north. “In northern China where the agriculture is mainly wheat production footbinding appears to be very popular, common, and almost “universal” even among the rich and poor.” (Turner 1997:449) In southern China, however, footbinding was not very popular if at all. Only “women of higher families”(Turner 1997:449) practiced footbinding in the south. This is probably mainly from the southern agricultural production of rice in which the fields are almost always wet. Here women and men had to work barefooted. This made it impossible for women with bound feet and because the “need for family labor, including that of women, it made it impossible to exclude them from doing work in wet fields barefooted working against the binding of feet to smaller sizes.” (Turner 1997:450) Footbinding in the rice fields wasn’t very practical. “Girls and women with bound feet did not work in wet rice paddies, but that they did plant, manage, and harvest dry crops like beans, vegetables, and wheat, being grown in the same area and sometime by the same families.” (Turner 1997:451)