What was the purpose of binding feet?

The purpose of binding the feet of young Chinese girls was to restrict their normal growth and make their feet as small as possible. This is because small feet were considered attractive.

At what age did they start foot-binding?

Foot-binding started on girls aged from five to eight years old.

How did Chinese girls have their feet bound?

Chinese girls had their feet bound by bending all of the toes except the big toe under the foot using strips of cloth. The strips were changed every month. The process was very painful and the damage permanent.

When did foot-binding stop?

Foot-binding in China only stopped in the early 20th century. There had been several attempts to ban the practice, notably in 1645, but these were not successful because many people still considered small feet an attractive quality.

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Article:	Foot-Binding
Author:	Mark Cartwright
Narrator:	Iona Lister

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Iona Lister

I live in the North-West Highlands of Scotland. I worked for the National Health Service as a speech and language therapist (adult specialism) for a long time before leaving the profession and working for medical charities.

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Mark Cartwright

Mark is a full-time writer, researcher, historian, and editor. Special interests include art, architecture, and discovering the ideas that all civilizations share. He holds an MA in Political Philosophy and is the WHE Publishing Director.

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Uploaded by Mark Cartwright, published on 27 September 2017. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

Foot-Binding

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