Download or read book Footbinding as Fashion written by John Robert Shepherd and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2018-12-18 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previous studies of the practice of footbinding in imperial China have theorized that it expressed ethnic identity or that it served an economic function. By analyzing the popularity of footbinding in different places and times, Footbinding as Fashion investigates the claim that early Qing (1644–1911) attempts by Manchu rulers to ban footbinding made it a symbol of anti-Manchu sentiment and Han identity and led to the spread of the practice throughout all levels of society. Detailed case studies of Taiwan, Hebei, and Liaoning provinces exploit rich bodies of previously neglected ethnographic reports, economic surveys, and rare censuses of footbinding to challenge the significance of sedentary female labor and ethnic rivalries as factors leading to the hegemony of the footbinding fashion. The study concludes that, independently of identity politics and economic factors, variations in local status hierarchies and elite culture coupled with status competition and fear of ridicule for not binding girls’ feet best explain how a culturally arbitrary fashion such as footbinding could attain hegemonic status.
Download or read book Cinderella s Sisters written by Dorothy Ko and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Footbinding is widely condemned as perverse & as symbolic of male domination over women. This study offers a more complex explanation of a thousand year practice, contending that the binding of women's feet in China was sustained by the interests of both women and men.
Download or read book Aching for Beauty written by Ping Wang and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the history and cultural practice of footbinding in China reveals the traditions that contributed to and surrounded its thousand-year enforcement, as well as its related literature, music, contests, and rewards.
Download or read book Bound Feet Western Dress written by Pang-Mei Chang and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A harrowing dual memoir that braids the story of a Chinese-American woman’s search for identity with the dramatic tale of her great-aunt, who was born at the turn of the century in tradition-bound China and went on to become Vice President of China’s first women’s bank. "In China, a woman is nothing." Thus begins the saga of a woman born at the turn of the century to a well-to-do, highly respected Chinese family, a woman who continually defied the expectations of her family and the traditions of her culture. Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last emperor and the Communist Revolution, Chang Yu-i's life is marked by a series of rebellions: her refusal as a child to let her mother bind her feet, her scandalous divorce, and her rise to Vice President of China's first women's bank in her later years. In the alternating voices of two generations, this literary debut brings together a deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China with the very American story of Yu-i's brilliant and assimilated grandniece, struggling with her own search for identity and belonging. Written in pitch-perfect prose and alive with detail, Bound Feet and Western Dress is the story of independent women struggling to emerge from centuries of customs and duty.
Download or read book Every Step a Lotus written by Dorothy Ko and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A well-written and beautifully illustrated book on foot binding and the exquisite shoes designed for the tiny feet.
Download or read book The Three Inch Golden Lotus written by Feng Jicai and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2021-05-25 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beguiling story is woven around the life of Fragrant Lotus, who has her feet bound in the supreme Golden Lotus style when she is six years old. Events in Fragrants Lotus’ life twist and unfold in a series of witty and often wicked ironies, obliterating easy distinctions between kindness and cruelty, history and fable, forgery and authentic work. The novel’s waggish narrator exists in the tension between judgement and description, wryly deflating his reader’s certainties along the way. Written in 1985, The Three-Inch Golden Lotus is a deeply affecting, thoroughly enjoyable literary revelation.
Download or read book Bound Feet Young Hands written by Laurel Bossen and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-25 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Footbinding was common in China until the early twentieth century, when most Chinese were family farmers. Why did these families bind young girls' feet? And why did footbinding stop? In this groundbreaking work, Laurel Bossen and Hill Gates upend the popular view of footbinding as a status, or even sexual, symbol by showing that it was an undeniably effective way to get even very young girls to sit still and work with their hands. Interviews with 1,800 elderly women, many with bound feet, reveal the reality of girls' hand labor across the North China Plain, Northwest China, and Southwest China. As binding reshaped their feet, mothers disciplined girls to spin, weave, and do other handwork because many village families depended on selling such goods. When factories eliminated the economic value of handwork, footbinding died out. As the last generation of footbound women passes away, Bound Feet, Young Hands presents a data-driven examination of the social and economic aspects of this misunderstood custom.
Download or read book Placing Empire written by Kate McDonald and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-08-01 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Placing Empire examines the spatial politics of Japanese imperialism through a study of Japanese travel and tourism to Korea, Manchuria, and Taiwan between the late nineteenth century and the early 1950s. In a departure from standard histories of Japan, this book shows how debates over the role of colonized lands reshaped the social and spatial imaginary of the modern Japanese nation and how, in turn, this sociospatial imaginary affected the ways in which colonial difference was conceptualized and enacted. The book thus illuminates how ideas of place became central to the production of new forms of colonial hierarchy as empires around the globe transitioned from an era of territorial acquisition to one of territorial maintenance.
Download or read book Mother written by Claudia O'Keefe and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1996-05 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mary Higgins Clark, Amy Tan, Joyce Carol Oates and Maya Angelou are among the gifted writers who share their personal reflections on mother in this exceptiolnal collection of fiction, essays and poetry. From a woman's choice to become a mother to the inner workings of a mother's relationship with her children, the full cycle of motherhood is brought to life in these touching works.
Download or read book Cinderella s Sisters written by Dorothy Ko and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2005-12-12 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of footbinding is full of contradictions and unexpected turns. The practice originated in the dance culture of China's medieval court and spread to gentry families, brothels, maid's quarters, and peasant households. Conventional views of footbinding as patriarchal oppression often neglect its complex history and the incentives of the women involved. This revisionist history, elegantly written and meticulously researched, presents a fascinating new picture of the practice from its beginnings in the tenth century to its demise in the twentieth century. Neither condemning nor defending foot-binding, Dorothy Ko debunks many myths and misconceptions about its origins, development, and eventual end, exploring in the process the entanglements of male power and female desires during the practice's thousand-year history. Cinderella's Sisters argues that rather than stemming from sexual perversion, men's desire for bound feet was connected to larger concerns such as cultural nostalgia, regional rivalries, and claims of male privilege. Nor were women hapless victims, the author contends. Ko describes how women—those who could afford it—bound their own and their daughters' feet to signal their high status and self-respect. Femininity, like the binding of feet, was associated with bodily labor and domestic work, and properly bound feet and beautifully made shoes both required exquisite skills and technical knowledge passed from generation to generation. Throughout her narrative, Ko deftly wields methods of social history, literary criticism, material culture studies, and the history of the body and fashion to illustrate how a practice that began as embodied lyricism—as a way to live as the poets imagined—ended up being an exercise in excess and folly.
Download or read book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan written by Lisa See and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-10-17 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lily is the daughter of a humble farmer, and to her family she is just another expensive mouth to feed. Then the local matchmaker delivers startling news: if Lily's feet are bound properly, they will be flawless. In nineteenth-century China, where a woman's eligibility is judged by the shape and size of her feet, this is extraordinary good luck. Lily now has the power to make a good marriage and change the fortunes of her family. To prepare for her new life, she must undergo the agonies of footbinding, learn nu shu, the famed secret women's writing, and make a very special friend, Snow Flower. But a bitter reversal of fortune is about to change everything.
Download or read book White Lily written by Ting-Xing Ye and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nearly a century ago, in the Forbidden City, China’s last emperor reigned from his dragon throne. Although he was only a boy, the imperial decrees issued in his name echoed in every corner of the country. Every man had to shave his head and wear a single pigtail to symbolize his submission to the emperor, and every woman was second in importance to the men in her family. Women were obedient to their fathers and brothers and later to the husbands in their arranged marriages. Certainly no woman was encouraged to attend school or to show any independence. Into this world, in a village in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River, White Lily was born. She had a happy childhood, running and playing, until, at the age of four, she was forced to undergo the painful procedure of foot binding required for all females of her social class. But White Lily has her heart set on more than a traditional role in society, and she enlists the support of her beloved elder brother. Together they devise a plan to defy tradition and convince their father that White Lily’s feet and mind must be allowed to grow.
Download or read book Footbinding written by Shirley See Yan Ma and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2009-12-04 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book Shirley See Yan Ma provides a Jungian perspective on the Chinese tradition of footbinding and considers how it can be used as a metaphor for the suffering of women and the repression of the feminine, as well as a symbol for hope, creativity and spiritual transformation. Drawing on personal history, popular myths, literature, and work with clients, Footbinding discusses how modern women still symbolically find their feet bound through this ancient practice. Detailed case studies from Western and Asian women demonstrate how Jungian analysis can loosen these psychological bindings allowing the client to reconnect with the feminine archetype, discover their own identity and take control of their own destiny. This original book will be of great interest to Jungian analysts looking for a new perspective. It will also be of interest to anyone studying Chinese culture and psychology.
Download or read book Chinese Footbinding written by Howard S. Levy and published by University of Tokyo Press. This book was released on 2001-04-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first complete history of the custom of footbinding, which persisted for a thousand years in China. Drawn from the erotic literature of traditional China and more contemporary sources, this is a detailed portrait of a practice that lay at the heart of the sexual psychology of the Chinese for whom the golden lotus or bound foot encased in tiny silken slipper and swaying willow walk of bound-footed women were the ultimate expressions of sensuality. But as the author shows, footbinding was more than an erotic custom; it was also central to the sociological position and role of women in Chinese society. The book deals with the origin, presence, and history of foot binding, the techniques associated with it, its place in erotic practices, the pain and pleasure of the custom, and its sociological importance.
Download or read book Changing Clothes in China written by Antonia Finnane and published by Hurst Publishers. This book was released on 2023-05-30 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have long regarded fashion as something peculiarly Western. In this surprising, sumptuously illustrated book, Antonia Finnane challenges this view, which she argues is based on nineteenth- and twentieth-century representations of Chinese dress as traditional and unchanging. Fashions, she shows, were part of Chinese life in the late imperial era, even if a fashion industry was not then apparent. In the early twentieth century the key features of modern fashion became evident, particularly in Shanghai, and rapidly changing dress styles showed the effects. The volatility of Chinese dress throughout the twentieth century matched vicissitudes in national politics. Finnane describes in detail how the close-fitting jacket and high collar of the 1911 Revolutionary period, the skirt and jacket-blouse of the May Fourth era, and the military style popular in the Cultural Revolution gave way finally to the variegated, globalized wardrobe of today. She brilliantly connects China’s modernization and global visibility with changes in dress, offering a vivid portrait of the complex, subtle, and sometimes contradictory ways the people of China have worn their nation on their backs.
Download or read book Wild Swans written by Jung Chang and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2008-06-20 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of three generations in twentieth-century China that blends the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic sweep of eyewitness history—a bestselling classic in thirty languages with more than ten million copies sold around the world, now with a new introduction from the author. An engrossing record of Mao’s impact on China, an unusual window on the female experience in the modern world, and an inspiring tale of courage and love, Jung Chang describes the extraordinary lives and experiences of her family members: her grandmother, a warlord’s concubine; her mother’s struggles as a young idealistic Communist; and her parents’ experience as members of the Communist elite and their ordeal during the Cultural Revolution. Chang was a Red Guard briefly at the age of fourteen, then worked as a peasant, a “barefoot doctor,” a steelworker, and an electrician. As the story of each generation unfolds, Chang captures in gripping, moving—and ultimately uplifting—detail the cycles of violent drama visited on her own family and millions of others caught in the whirlwind of history.
Download or read book Ties That Bind Ties That Break written by Lensey Namioka and published by Laurel Leaf. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Third Sister in the Tao family, Ailin has watched her two older sisters go through the painful process of having their feet bound. In China in 1911, all the women of good families follow this ancient tradition. But Ailin loves to run away from her governess and play games with her male cousins. Knowing she will never run again once her feet are bound, Ailin rebels and refuses to follow this torturous tradition. As a result, however, the family of her intended husband breaks their marriage agreement. And as she enters adolescence, Ailin finds that her family is no longer willing to support her. Chinese society leaves few options for a single woman of good family, but with a bold conviction and an indomitable spirit, Ailin is determined to forge her own destiny. Her story is a tribute to all those women whose courage created new options for the generations who came after them.
