Cultures of Fetishism (11 page)

Nurse’s mother, who was our cook and laundress, had woven six cloths for me on her loom. It was finer and softer than my cousin’s binding cloth.

Cousin, whose family was not quite as wealthy as ours, had only two for changing twice a month. Her feet smelled. And her skin peeled. My mother never relented about the binding even when I pleaded and described the terrible pain. However, she made it as comfortable for me as she could. She instructed Nurse to change my bindings a few times a month, even though it meant removing her neat little stitches and re-sewing each time. When, on a few occasions, Mother discovered that I had opened the stitches and loosened the cloth at night to give my poor little toes a special treat of cool breeze, she Never beat me on the shoulders with a sugar cane. She simply gave me another lecture on how the tiniest feet were the most precious and how each night of unbinding defeated the shortening process and how one day I would be grateful for the pain and discomfort, and how one day a rich, handsome man would fall in love with my lovely lotus feet.

And sure enough, shortly after my fifteenth century birthday, this very man came along He fell in love with me the moment he looked at my three- and-one-half-inch lotus, which of course he could not see but only imagine, since they were clad in the gold-rimmed, satin slippers embroidered with a green and yellow dragon,
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which peaked out from beneath my long black satin trousers. He agreed to the marriage with, what seemed to me at the time, a hurried, surreptitious glance up to my face, which my mirror and my family had told me was exquisite.

I had delicately slanted ebony eyes that were brilliant with the vitality of my questioning intelligence. The vivid impressions of the world I had seen were reflected in them. I was also blessed with the requisite tiny squat nose and rosebud mouth set in a jade oval that was whiter and more sensuously curved than the languorous bulb of a night-folded lotus flower.

The next day, when I was formally introduced to my husband, I noticed his eyes light up with pleasure as he watched me walking toward him. I no longer walked about with a cane or with my nurse supporting me. By the age of thirteen, I had learned the walk that went with lotus feet. It had not been a matter of studying or practicing that walk. It came naturally as a result of the physical effects of footbinding and my attempts to lessen the pains of walking on lotus feet.

After several years of being bound, as my feet grew shorter and more pointed, as the arch of my foot grew more bowed, the section from my knee to ankle became stunted in growth. Consequently when I walked I could only take very tiny steps and had to place my weight on my thighs and hips. This way of walking exuded a promise of exquisite sensuous delights. No one had to tell me this. It came as naturally to my mind as the lotus walking had come to my body. Although I never talked about it with my mother, I was aware that my method of walking caused the outer folds of my vagina to rub against each other.
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As husband-to-be watched me walk toward him, it was as if he could see through my satin pants. First eyes lit up; then a moment later

• The walk that resulted from binding and its effects on the body and genital organs. From a Taiwanese doctor (Levy, 34). Ku Hung-ming, a scholar who advocated footbinding, describes the “wondrous” folds of the vagina. Levy (141). Buttocks full and large: Levy (151). General physiological effect: Levy (295–99).
  

  the corners of his lips curled into a smile of pleasure. As for me, his looks and the sensations between my thighs were telling me of the unspoken advan- tages of lotus feet. I took note of the long, lush pigtail that announced the sensual possibilities of my-husband-to-be.
  

  Later I learned that many men, my husband among them, believed that a woman whose thighs and hips undulated when she walked could also press her vagina forcefully during sexual intercourse, giving intense sensations to the man’s penis.
  

  But there was more to it than that. Soon after we were married my husband would begin to teach me the genuine value of diminutive feet. I actually didn’t do much walking about after I got married. I did so only when serving tea to my husband and his business friends. If I went into town, which I rarely did, I was carried about in a covered sedan chair. Most of the time, I spent the day at home, lolling about, reading, learning the lute, embroidering, trying out a new face powder or hair lacquer, while waiting for my husband’s return from his office. When I knew he was on his way, I would call my personal maid to dress me. My husband would greet me with his usual smile of pleasure. After dinner, he would carry me to bed.
  

  About three years after I married him, I found out that when my husband was a young man still in school he had begun to learn the ways of lotus feet from expensive prostitutes who all had golden lotuses, which they knew how to employ in golden ways. There is a difference between one lotus and another. The golden were said to be three inches or less. These were the kind I used to dream of as a child. Mine turned out to be somewhere between slightly more than three inches and yet not nearly four. They were called Silver Lotus. Those that were any longer than four and yet still in the shape of a lotus were Iron Lotus. Phoenix Head meant that the tip of the foot was small and pointed, like the head of a bird. New Moon was supposed to indi- cate that the tiny foot was encased in white silk stockings that enhanced its elegance and made it look as slender as a sliver of moon. Jade Bamboo Shoots, which is what my husband liked to call my tiny lotus, was a term of endearment meaning that the foot was warm and glossy-white and soft as jade with a tip as pointed as a bamboo shoot.
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  The tiny foot, in its flesh, personified the beauty of the entire body. It glistened like the white skin, it was arched like the eyebrows, pointed like the jade fingers, rounded like the breasts, small like the mouth, and when worn with the red embroidered shoes it was like the lips. Since the foot was hidden away it was enigmatic, like the vagina, the clitoris, the vulva, and all the private inner parts of a woman’s body. The odor was more delicious than the armpits, legs, or vagina and also more seductive because a man could put the tiny foot all the way into his mouth.
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  There were many ways to caress a lotus that would arouse the man, but if he was a gentle and sensitive man these gestures could carry the excitements to the woman’s body, arousing her to peaks of exquisite joy. My husband’s arousal depended very much on his ability to bring these sensuous excite- ments to me. He was not like some other husbands of the time who cared
  

  only for his own pleasures and might have three or four wives who he wanted to humiliate sexually. My husband was a liberal in all ways and even believed that one day Chinese girls might be given an education equal to that of their brothers. It wasn’t until later that he realized that equality would mean the end of footbinding. And when he did come to that realization, everything between us changed. However, for the first fifteen years of our marriage, he was a Lotus lover and loved only me and loved to teach me the many ways of the Lotus.
  

  He began with the average, ordinary way of caressing my lotus. After he carried me to bed, he would simply hold my left Lotus in his right hand. With the point of the Lotus face-up, he would tightly grasp the side of the Lotus in his palms and press his thumb and forefinger on the toes, covering the instep with his other fingers. After a few minutes he would reverse to the right Lotus and perform the same gestures with his left hand.
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  A few months later, my husband introduced me to more complicated pleasures. At the time I didn’t always know what he was doing. But he seemed practiced in his methods and sure of himself. His confidence was very exciting to me. As I think back now and recall his methods of grasping and caressing my Lotus, they seem rather studied and artificial, almost ridiculous. But in those days whatever my husband did with my body seemed just right to me. Even when the pressure of his hands and fingers verged on pain, ulti- mately his carefully calculated touches on my Lotuses could make my entire body sing sweetly like a lute.
  

  He would press with his palm and four fingers on the tip of the lotus and instep and then, placing his thumb and forefinger across and under the middle of the arched sole, he would grip tightly and twist his wrist around. Tightly covering my instep with his palm he would lock it under the sole with his thumb, index, and middle finger. His ring finger and little finger would support my heel. He would place the big toe in the center of his palm and press his lit- tle finger down on it. With his thumb and middle finger forming a circle around my shoe he would press the center of the sole against the thumb and forefinger. At a certain moment in this ritual of Lotus caressing, he would ask me to caress his pigtail between my thumb and forefinger. Usually, that would be the moment before the moment of his ejaculation. Sometimes though he would require these pigtail caresses many times during our scenario of love.
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  After our first year of marriage, my husband supplemented the Lotus caresses with little scenes that he might have learned with the prostitutes, but that soon became our personal joys.
  

  He would instruct me to sit at the edge of the bed and lean backwards, supporting my upper body by placing my hands behind me. From this half- reclining position it would be easy for me to spread my legs upwards and apart. As he stood facing me, he put my right foot on his left shoulder and grasped my left foot in his right palm. He could gaze at the right foot and feel the left one soft as cotton in his hands. I would gaze up into his eyes and he would lean forward to bite my tongue. He timed the frequency and vigor of his movements with the upward and downward motion of the right lotus on
  

  his shoulder and convey his mounting excitement to me by grasping the left lotus tightly between his thumb and forefinger. By then I knew to caress his pigtail at just the right moment of his excitement.
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  Sometimes he would sprawl across the edge of our bed, facing inwards with one foot stretched out and the other hanging beside the bed. He instructed me to sit and rest my thighs on his stomach. My left thigh crossed his knee so that my red shoe could face upwards. My right thigh crossed over my left thigh in such a way that I could draw up my knee to a position that placed my bare lotus in his left palm. He had the red shoe for his visual pleasure and my slender, pointed, soft, glossy bare lotus for sensuous pleasures and for all kinds of playful caresses. Intercourse in this position, although a bit uncomfortable for me, gave my husband exquisite sexual excitement. His rising excitement would make my own excitements rise to heavenly peaks.
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  The basic formula of the alternating red shoe–bare white lotus scenarios my husband had learned from prostitutes. But he invented many of the vari- ations, and his inventiveness enabled me to participate willingly in the joys of
  

  these scenes. There was one that particularly excited me.
  

  Our courtyard garden, which was enclosed by small trees and hidden from view, was open to the sky. On moonlit nights, my husband would like to sit on the stone stool in our garden. He liked me to start out wearing my red embroidered slippers and stand before him fully dressed. He instructed me to clasp his neck with my right arm and balance myself on my right foot only. My left foot was to be drawn upwards. I would take off my left shoe and place the exposed lotus in his left palm. He would encircle my waist with his right arm and kiss me as I leaned forward. He would bite my tongue and then begin caressing it with his tongue as he caressed my left Lotus between his palm and three middle fingers. With our tongues caressing and one Lotus touching earth like a red pepper and the other in his palm like a slender bamboo shoot, we needed no other pleasures.
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  In the first five years of our marriage we had two sons. Our last child, who came to us almost as a surprise, ten years after our second son, was a girl. A year or so after our daughter’s birth, my husband had begun to become a stranger to me. Though he had been a devoted Lotus lover throughout his youth and the first fifteen years of our marriage, each year after the turn of the century he became more and more aware that footbinding was considered politically incorrect. If it got around that he favored such an antiquated practice, it would diminish his prospects for advancing his career in the government and probably severely curtail the profits from his business deal- ings. He had always been a man who kept up with the times. When he heard that pigtails would soon be outlawed, he immediately cut off his beautiful long pigtail, which for all these long years he had regarded as a mark of his manhood, much as my Lotuses had been the mark of my womanhood. He had worn his pigtail with pride and dignity. Now, he prided himself on his liberal political and social ideas. Yet, despite his willingness to give up his pigtail and despite his advanced social ideals, he had managed to resist the foot emancipation movement until after the earliest years of the century.
  

  However, the 1910 Revolution, with its emphasis on social equality and the emancipation of women, would set in motion the nationwide events that would eventually bring an end to footbinding in China. After nearly four thousand years (2100BC–1900AD) it took only a decade or so, less than one generation, for the practice to almost disappear. By 1910 most well-to-do families had decided that their daughters would have natural feet. Very few girls born after 1920 had their feet bound. The tragic generations were woman my age and older, any woman who had been born before 1907.
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  As early as 1897, foreign missionaries were running a natural foot society in Shanghai. They petitioned the Emperor that children born after 1897 should not be recognized as citizens unless they had natural feet. The year after my second son was born the Empress Dowager, under pressure, issued “The Anti-Footbinding Edict of 1902.” After the 1910 Revolution, there were foot emancipation edicts announced every day.
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  There were public demonstrations and newspaper editorials denouncing the practice as a sign of barbarism and reactionary political directions. In most towns and villages the local governments recommended coercive measures to assure the abolition of bound feet. Girls under fifteen were told to unbind their feet, or were for- bidden to bind them if they were still unbound. The fine for disobedience was five silver dollars. Women over thirty were advised to let their feet out, but were not fined if they did not. Female investigators were appointed to assist village elders in conducting periodic examinations of young girls’ feet. In some places, women with bound feet were publicly shamed. In some places, cast-off bindings were collected into mountains of shame. Little red shoes were collected and lined up along the corridors of schools and other public buildings.
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  The public shaming became the private and personal shame of the woman with tiny feet. Almost every household where a woman with bound feet lived was affected. My husband was ashamed to be seen in public with me. In pri- vate he disdained my lotus feet and all the rest of my body and never again did his eyes light up with excitement at the sight of me. He turned his gaze from my face, trying not to look at me, and only did so when absolutely nec- essary. He was afraid that his new friends and business colleagues would laugh at me because my tiny feet were so ridiculous. He stopped inviting his friends and business acquaintances to the house. He would no longer invite me to attend banquets with him. He now praised natural feet with the same fervor with which he had sung the delights of the Lotus. He soon took a mistress ten years younger than me who had large natural feet and a high position in the revolutionary government.
  

  My husband’s harsh treatment deprived me of the love that had brought my erotic senses, my entire being, into existence. It made me feel as though I, myself, whoever I had once been, no longer existed. For a few years, I no longer knew who I was. Who I had been had been so much enmeshed in my silver lotuses. I suffered deeply but there was no one I could talk to about my sufferings. Only one thing made me happy. My husband forbade that our daughter have her feet bound. I was spared having to inflict this painful
  

  experience on her. But I feared that when she grew up she would have contempt for me. She would laugh at my preposterous lotuses.
  

  My mother, who had died several years ago, had believed that she would enhance and insure my marital happiness by insisting that I have my feet bound. But my beautiful silver lotuses turned out, in the end, to be the source of my greatest misery and unhappiness. Like many other women of my generation, I tried to get my feet to revert to their natural form.
  

  Compared to the excruciating torture of letting the foot out, the discom- forts and pains of foot binding were relatively minor.
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  In spite of my growing hatred for him, I wanted my husband back. I wanted to become an emanci- pated woman. I was ashamed that I could not participate in the world outside my garden walls. I wanted to set a positive example for my little girl.
  

  I tried soaking my feet in cold water every night but this remedy did nothing except to make my feet swell up. I tried walking about without bindings. But this brought extreme pressure on my four toes, which until then had been curled up under the sole of my foot. I endured these tortures for two months. But there was no sign of any improvement. In fact, my instep became puffy and my legs were becoming more and more swollen. I was hearing what had happened to other women of my generation who tried to let out their feet. In the winter their feet and legs were very sensitive to low temperatures and suffered from cold sores. In the spring, as the days grew warmer and warmer, the flesh would decay and make it impossible to take even one step.