Footbinding as Fashion

Footbinding as Fashion PDF Author: John Robert Shepherd
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295744421
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
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.

Footbinding as Fashion

Footbinding as Fashion PDF Author: John Robert Shepherd
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295744421
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

Cinderella's Sisters

Cinderella's Sisters PDF Author: Dorothy Ko
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520253906
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
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.

Aching for Beauty

Aching for Beauty PDF Author: Ping Wang
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452904871
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
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.

Footbinding

Footbinding PDF Author: Shirley See Yan Ma
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135190070
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Footbinding 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, and creativity.

Every Step a Lotus

Every Step a Lotus PDF Author: Dorothy Ko
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520232839
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
A well-written and beautifully illustrated book on foot binding and the exquisite shoes designed for the tiny feet.

Mother

Mother PDF Author: Claudia O'Keefe
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0671529986
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 374

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Book Description
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.

Bound Feet & Western Dress

Bound Feet & Western Dress PDF Author: Pang-Mei Chang
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307792242
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
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.

Bound Feet, Young Hands

Bound Feet, Young Hands PDF Author: Laurel Bossen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503601072
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
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.

Changing Clothes in China

Changing Clothes in China PDF Author: Antonia Finnane
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
ISBN: 1787387828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
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.

The Three-Inch Golden Lotus

The Three-Inch Golden Lotus PDF Author: Feng Jicai
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 9780824816063
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
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.