Chapter 268 Small feet and bound feet

Once, the Empress Dowager wanted to summon Li Hongzhang's mother "Madame Bigfoot" in Hefei, and all the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty went to greet her.Li Hongzhang was afraid that the old lady would show his big feet and make a fool of himself, so he gave the old lady a lot of advice.The old lady was so angry that she flew into a rage and cursed: "Your father doesn't think my feet are big, but you think my feet are big!" Angrily, she announced that she would not get out of the sedan chair. Small feet, also known as three-inch golden lotus, commonly known as bound feet, are a feudal custom of wrapping women's feet with cloth strips to make them smaller and pointed.This kind of small feet with deformed muscles and bones after being tightly wrapped was widely praised by the ancients as the "three-inch golden lotus".

The concubine of Li Yu, the empress of the Southern Tang Dynasty, practiced the method of foot binding, creating a precedent for Chinese women's foot binding.The widespread foot-binding among the people began after the Song Dynasty.During the Xuanhe period of Emperor Huizong of Song Dynasty, special foot-binding shoes appeared in the boudoir of Bianliang (now Kaifeng) in Tokyo, called "wrong to the end", and began to spread in the society. With the increasing popularity of foot binding, small feet have become an important symbol of female beauty since the Song Dynasty.There is a folk custom: "From the head to the toe, the wind runs down." During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Datong, Shanxi.Shengfang, Hebei and other places are famous for their rich beauties, but it's just because the girls there have more beautiful feet.In the past, there was a saying that "beauties in the world come from Yangzhou". In fact, the "Yangzhou feet", which are also called "Suzhou heads", are the biggest charm of Yangzhou beauties.