24. Talk about the three-inch golden lotus

Tu Xiang does not cherish the lotus to take steps, and the long sorrow Luo socks Ling Bo goes. I saw the dance back to the wind, but there was nowhere to go. Stealing through the palace is stable, and standing in a trap. It should be difficult to say delicately, and it must be seen from the palm of your hand.

This is Su Dongpo's poem "Bodhisattva Man", which is known as the evidence of foot binding in the history of Chinese poetry. I always feel that something is wrong, I can only say that a woman written by Su Dongpo dances well, and I can't see that it is singing the praises of "three-inch golden lotus". As for the words "lotus step" and "microwave", they have been there for a long time, and it does not prove that they are written to wrap their feet.

"Dropout Record" said that there are still few people who are bound between Xining and Yuanfeng. At least in Su Dongpo's time, foot binding was a very rare thing.

Archaeological discoveries found that six pairs of women's shoes unearthed from the Southern Song Dynasty tomb in Fuzhou, Fujian Province, are 13.3-14 cm long and 4.5-5 cm long. It should be said that at the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, foot binding became popular. The author thinks that this is related to the Southern Song Dynasty's advocacy of science. "Death by starvation is a small matter, but loss of festival is a big matter." After a woman binds her feet, she can't walk casually, and the chance of cheating is much smaller.

The author has not only seen the photos of the three-inch golden lotus, but also seen the small feet in real life, which are really not beautiful at all. When I was a child, at the end of the sixties of the last century, there were several old ladies with small feet in the village where I lived. The shoes they wear are indeed much smaller than those of normal women. Occasionally, they would open the footcloth, revealing a three-inch golden lotus. At that time, I was still a child, and even if I watched it, I couldn't count them as having lost their virginity.

The child's memory is very deep, and the so-called three-inch golden lotus is really ugly to death. The foot was badly deformed, like a black reef. Perhaps, they will look better when they are younger. Later, looking at the "jade photo" of the three-inch golden lotus, it was not beautiful at all.

Women are confidants, and the three-inch golden lotus is a monster of Chinese men's whimsical ideas. When a trend is formed, it will naturally become fashionable. At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, women's foot binding flourished. If someone's girl is good in all aspects, but her feet are not small enough, it is difficult to find a good family to marry. Therefore, when you are a mother, you will be ruthless, and you will start to bind your feet when girls are five or six years old.

When the Yuan Dynasty entered the Central Plains, foot binding was not advocated. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, there was no big foot binding, Zhu Yuanzhang's queen, Mrs. Ma's nickname was Ma Dajiao. In the middle and late Ming Dynasty, foot binding flourished again.

After the Qing people entered the customs, the Manchus did not have the custom of binding their feet. For example, the Empress Dowager Cixi is a pair of heavenly feet.

The Empress Dowager Cixi has done a lot of bad things, but there is one thing that she did well. It was she who ordered several times to prohibit folk foot binding, and finally stopped the wind of the three-inch golden lotus, so that countless women suffered a lot of crimes.

The author deeply hated the so-called three-inch golden lotus, and wrote several articles and poems to criticize it. The last two poems are as follows-

One

A pair of red embroidered shoes

Hide in the shrimp blue teacup

The white silk of the second length

Wrapped around dough-like feet

Layer upon layer

Rotten flesh and broken bones

Smiles

One step at a time

Every woman's shoes

Both are half-opened

- Three-inch golden lotus

A pair of red embroidered shoes

Rot in a shrimp-blue teacup

Second

It's all about the essence

Except for the little feet