Author: Wang Ping
Publisher: Anchor
Keywords: china, footbinding, beauty, aching
Number of Pages: 288
Published: 2002-03-12
List price: $16.00
ISBN-10: 0385721366
ISBN-13: 9780385721363

When Wang Ping was nine years old, she secretly set about binding her feet with elastic bands. Footbinding had by then been outlawed in China, women’s feet “liberated,” but at that young age she desperately wanted the tiny feet her grandmother had–deformed and malodorous as they were. By first examining the root of her own girlhood desire, Wang unleashes a fascinating inquiry into a centuries-old custom.Aching for Beauty combines Wang’s unique perspective and remarkable literary gifts in an award-winning exploration of the history and culture surrounding footbinding. In setting out t

Author: Fan Hong
Publisher: Frank Ca
Keywords: china, sport, global, soc, modern, bodies, feminism, freedom, liberation, women, footbinding
Number of Pages: 352
Published: 1997-06-01
List price: $54.95
ISBN-10: 0714643343
ISBN-13: 9780714643342

This original book brings Chinese women to the centre of the Chinese cultural stage by examining the role which exercise and, subsequently, sport played in their liberation. Physical emancipation, particularly in the custom of footbinding, which continued to be practised to some extent in China until 1949, was the prerequisite for wider emancipation. Through the medium of women’s bodies, Fan Hong explores the significance of religious beliefs, cultural codes and political dogmas for gender relations, gender concepts and the human body in an Asian setting.Until now no academic work has di

Author: Dorothy Ko
Publisher: University of California Press
Keywords: lilienthal, asian, studies, imprint, philip, footbinding, sisters, revisionist, history, cinderella
Number of Pages: 360
Published: 2007-12-17
List price: $21.95
ISBN-10: 0520253906
ISBN-13: 9780520253902

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