Bound feet

Foot binding
A Chinese woman showing a "golden lotus" foot, image by Lai Afong, c.1870s
Traditional Chinese	纏足
Simplified Chinese	缠足
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin chánzú Wade–Giles ch'an2-tzu2 IPA [ʈʂʰǎn.tsǔ] Yue: Cantonese Yale Romanization chìhn-jūk Jyutping cin4-zuk1
Alternative (Min) Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	縛跤
Simplified Chinese	缚跤
Transcriptions Southern Min Hokkien POJ pa̍k-kha

Foot binding was the custom of applying painfully tight binding to the feet of young girls to modify the shape of the foot. The practice possibly originated among upper-class court dancers during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period in Imperial China (10th or 11th century), then became popular during the Song dynasty and eventually spread to all social classes. Foot binding became popular as a means of displaying status (women from wealthy families, who did not need their feet to work, could afford to have them bound) and was correspondingly adopted as a symbol of beauty in Chinese culture. Its prevalence and practice however varied in different parts of the country. Feet altered by binding were called lotus feet.

The Manchu Kangxi Emperor tried to ban foot binding in 1664 but failed. In the later part of the 19th century, Chinese reformers challenged the practice but it was not until the early 20th century that foot binding began to die out as a result of anti foot-binding campaigns. Foot-binding resulted in lifelong disabilities for most of its subjects, and a few elderly Chinese women still survive today with disabilities related to their bound feet.

There are many suggestions for the origin of foot binding. One story relates that during the Shang dynasty, the concubine Daji, who was said to have clubfoot, asked the Emperor to make footbinding mandatory for all girls in court so that her own feet would be the standard of beauty and elegance.

Another story tells of a favorite courtesan of Emperor Xiao Baojuan, Pan Yu'er, who had delicate feet, dancing barefeet over a floor decorated with golden lotus flower design. The emperor expressed admiration and said that "lotus springs from her every step!" (步步生蓮), a reference to the Buddhist legend of Padmavati under whose feet lotus springs forth. This story may have given rise to the terms "golden lotus" or "lotus feet" used to describe bound feet, there is however no evidence that Pan Yu'er ever bound her feet.

The general view is that the practice is likely to have originated from the time of Emperor Li Yu (Southern Tang of the Ten Kingdoms, just before the Song dynasty). Emperor Li Yu created a six-foot tall golden lotus decorated with precious stones and pearls, and asked his concubine Yao Niang () to bind her feet in white silk into the shape of the crescent moon, and performed a dance ballet-like on the points of her feet on the lotus. Yao Niang's dance was said to be so graceful that others sought to imitate her. The binding of feet was then replicated by other upper-class women and the practice spread.