Fashion is a mighty strange thing, doubly so when it leaves the fashion-follower permanently disabled, and quadruply so when the fashion lasts for a thousand years.
A 102-year-old is thought to be one of the few remaining women in China who has bound feet.
Han Qiaoni, from Yuxian County in northern China's Shanxi Province, had her feet broken and bound when she was just two years old.
[Meet the last of China's women to have her feet bound, Daily Mail, September 23, 2013]
Chinese women were still hobbling around on bound feet well within living memory. My first landlady in Hongkong had bound feet. That was 1971. “She comes from a backward region,” Chinese friends explained to me apologetically. Among urban and educated Chinese, the practice was pretty much shamed out of existence in the later 19th century.
I can see the poor woman now, clicking down the hall on her non-feet. Her name was Mama Lee. That was how it was printed on her business cards, ???. Mind if I feel old for a few minutes? Thanks.
