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SYSK Selects: How Foot Binding Worked · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's s
0:03
Speaker 1: Y s K Selects, I've chosen How Footbinding Worked. It's
0:07
Speaker 1: about an unusual practice that was tradition for about a
0:11
Speaker 1: thousand years in China, and it's just absolutely fascinating. Where
0:15
Speaker 1: we a little judge you or the usual in this episode,
0:19
Speaker 1: I would say that's a fair assessment, but hopefully you
0:21
Speaker 1: won't judge us too harshly and instead just enjoy this
0:25
Speaker 1: episode because it's a pretty good one. Take care. Welcome
0:33
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey,
0:42
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
0:46
Speaker 1: w Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's over there, and uh, it's
0:49
Speaker 1: time for stuff you should know, everybody, so settled down,
0:52
Speaker 1: buckle in, get ready. Hey, congratulations to Kristen Bell stuff
0:58
Speaker 1: you should know celebrity Van Kristen Bell and her husband
1:01
Speaker 1: Dak Shepard had their baby. Oh, hey, congratulations, A big
1:04
Speaker 1: congratulations to you. And uh, I don't know if I
1:08
Speaker 1: thought you're gonna congratulate her on a kick Starter movie. Oh,
1:11
Speaker 1: the Veronica Mars movie. Well, congratulations on that. My wife
1:14
Speaker 1: is very much looking forward to that and your wife
1:17
Speaker 1: is looking forward to meeting the baby. She's on her
1:20
Speaker 1: way right now. Kristen Bell's locking the doors. Oh my god.
1:25
Speaker 1: What started out as a small fascination with their show
1:28
Speaker 1: and tragedy dangerous made for TV movie obsession Anyway, I
1:33
Speaker 1: just wanted to say congratulations. Yeah, that's nice if you
1:35
Speaker 1: chucked sure, Uh, I got no congratulations over here yet.
1:40
Speaker 1: Interesting that I tied that to this podcast on like
1:44
Speaker 1: female torture essentially. Do you think there's something to that? Well,
1:48
Speaker 1: we live in a world now where we don't have
1:50
Speaker 1: to worry about although I think they had a son
1:52
Speaker 1: where any little baby's feet being binded, I guess not
1:56
Speaker 1: babies but four or five year olds. We're bound? Yeah, yeah, bound, binded, bound, Okay,
2:04
Speaker 1: because the feet were bound? Yes, yes yeah. Um, do
2:07
Speaker 1: you think we should explain to everybody what we're talking
2:10
Speaker 1: about foot binding? Yeah? I'm glad you. UM think you
2:13
Speaker 1: congratulated Kristen Bell because I didn't really have much of
2:16
Speaker 1: an intro for this one. Um, because it's just so fascinating.
2:22
Speaker 1: I feel like we should just kind of dive right in. Yeah.
2:25
Speaker 1: Fascinating and horrible and like oddly impactful in areas I
2:29
Speaker 1: never would have considered. So we should say that over
2:33
Speaker 1: the course of about a thousand years, from roughly seventy
2:37
Speaker 1: until about the nineteen fifties, like almost on the dot,
2:41
Speaker 1: a thousand years, about three billion women in China um
2:47
Speaker 1: bound their feet to basically train them to become small
2:52
Speaker 1: and pointy in a really bizarre custom that just kind
2:58
Speaker 1: of came out of nowhere and stuck around again for
3:00
Speaker 1: about a thousand years, voluntarily deforming their feet. Well, at
3:04
Speaker 1: the very least their mothers and grandmothers voluntarily deformed their
3:07
Speaker 1: feet for them. Good. Yeah, it's a very good point. Actually, Um,
3:11
Speaker 1: but at some point they had to take over, and
3:13
Speaker 1: I guess then it became voluntary. Well sure, well we'll
3:17
Speaker 1: get to all that, Okay, Spoilers abound. So basically this
3:22
Speaker 1: was purposeful deformation of the human foot, the human female foot, uh,
3:27
Speaker 1: in order to attract men. There was a standard of
3:31
Speaker 1: beauty abound foot. Um. And we'll describe it in a minute.
3:34
Speaker 1: But um, the idea, the whole thing kind of came
3:39
Speaker 1: from they think about, like I said, a d in
3:44
Speaker 1: the court of an emperor named Lee. You and Lee
3:48
Speaker 1: you had a favorite girlfriend ballerina girl. Yeah, and apparently
3:53
Speaker 1: he saw dancing once on a golden lotus pedestal because
3:58
Speaker 1: everything was made of gold back then in Ya, And um,
4:01
Speaker 1: she had her feet kind of wrapped up, I guess,
4:03
Speaker 1: like a ballerina or sometime. And he apparently got very
4:08
Speaker 1: very excited at this, visibly excited, so much so that, um,
4:13
Speaker 1: the other ladies of the court noticed this. Did you
4:15
Speaker 1: say visibly excited? Visibly excited? Um, yes, if you know
4:19
Speaker 1: what I mean. I would imagine, hey, this guy's been
4:23
Speaker 1: dead a thousand years, like all all slander and defamations
4:27
Speaker 1: like out the window. It's like it was a rocking time.
4:29
Speaker 1: It was the Southern Tank Dynasty. It was you never
4:31
Speaker 1: know what's gonna happen. Yeah, it made Caligula look like
4:34
Speaker 1: watching it as an adult, Yeah boring. Yeah. So um
4:39
Speaker 1: so really the lee you was very much entranced by
4:42
Speaker 1: this enough that other women in the court noticed it
4:44
Speaker 1: and they started wrapping their feet as well, and it
4:47
Speaker 1: just kind of took off from there, and it took
4:49
Speaker 1: a weird turn pretty early on. Uh what was the turn? Well,
4:54
Speaker 1: the turn is originally apparently the first the woman who
4:58
Speaker 1: started this whole thing just kind of wrapped her feet
5:00
Speaker 1: and bandages. Yeah to too. I guess. Oh, okay, I
5:03
Speaker 1: see what you mean that turn. It's a literal turn. Yeah. Well,
5:07
Speaker 1: it became a status thing at first because wealthy women
5:10
Speaker 1: did it, and um, then it sort of spread and
5:14
Speaker 1: and and it also would end up preventing women from
5:17
Speaker 1: doing like manual labor. Well, not prevent but it made
5:20
Speaker 1: it tougher. So it was sort of a status thing
5:22
Speaker 1: that meant like, if you had the bound feet round out,
5:24
Speaker 1: they're working in the fields, I don't even have to
5:26
Speaker 1: throw home. But then it spread throughout China and only
5:31
Speaker 1: a few places, actually it was more than this article
5:34
Speaker 1: led on and did some more research on that. I
5:36
Speaker 1: saw like where fifty to sixty percent of the women
5:39
Speaker 1: ended up binding their feet in China. And this says
5:41
Speaker 1: like acent except in these provinces. Well I think they
5:45
Speaker 1: were saying about close to a of the higher classes. Okay,
5:49
Speaker 1: but yeah, there was so maybe about half of the
5:52
Speaker 1: Chinese population total. Yeah, that makes sense. So the strange
5:57
Speaker 1: turn it took, though, was to go from simply wrapping
5:59
Speaker 1: their eat to actually the binding process, which is malforming
6:05
Speaker 1: your feet at a young age like four to seven
6:07
Speaker 1: years old for life, to where when your shoe is off.
6:12
Speaker 1: It looks like you're wearing your foot looks like a
6:14
Speaker 1: high heel. You're disfigured. Yeah, you can't walk very well. Um,
6:20
Speaker 1: you can't again, you can't work in the fields. Um.
6:23
Speaker 1: And your your foot has been brought to a point
6:26
Speaker 1: basically that's ideally three inches long, three inches like that's it,
6:33
Speaker 1: and it's pointed. And you do this by training your
6:37
Speaker 1: foot and your bones too to deform. Yeah. And when
6:41
Speaker 1: I say it looks like a high heel, like, your
6:43
Speaker 1: foot looks like a shoe, Like the heel is separate
6:47
Speaker 1: from the rest of the foot, and a big block
6:51
Speaker 1: that looks like the heel of a shoe. And the
6:53
Speaker 1: foot is permanently arched and pointy, and the toes are
6:56
Speaker 1: cold under and it's just if you look at pictures
7:00
Speaker 1: of this, it's horrific looking. Yeah. And it was so
7:03
Speaker 1: um entrenched in the Chinese culture that when it was
7:07
Speaker 1: outlawed for I guess the first time in nine um,
7:11
Speaker 1: it continued on and it took the Communists taking over
7:14
Speaker 1: to really get rid of it, and footbinding went the
7:17
Speaker 1: way of disco. Um by just practical necessity, UM, women
7:25
Speaker 1: had to work in the field and if you had
7:26
Speaker 1: bound feet, well you're in big trouble. Yeah, well the
7:30
Speaker 1: end of it. Should we talk about the end now
7:31
Speaker 1: or should we do it later. Let's do it now. Okay,
7:35
Speaker 1: let's just mess with the structure the end of it.
7:37
Speaker 1: There were a lot of factors at play. One was
7:39
Speaker 1: Western missionaries came over there for the first time and said, yeah,
7:44
Speaker 1: you know, this is really not what the rest of
7:47
Speaker 1: the world is doing, and it doesn't make you look
7:49
Speaker 1: good by the way. Uh, social Darwinists got on it
7:54
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, you know what, we're not going to
7:56
Speaker 1: survive as a country because like half of our ppulation
8:00
Speaker 1: is hobbled. Essentially, It's like this is gonna be really
8:03
Speaker 1: bad for business one day, and so they mounted like
8:06
Speaker 1: a real campaign, like an education campaign, which is really
8:11
Speaker 1: unusual back then. And uh, they had three phases to it.
8:15
Speaker 1: One was that it made you look bad and look
8:18
Speaker 1: strange to the rest of the world too. That taught
8:21
Speaker 1: the advantages of having normal feet, like walking without pain.
8:25
Speaker 1: And then they formed um natural foot societies where people
8:30
Speaker 1: would pledge not to do this to their daughters or
8:32
Speaker 1: allow their daughter to marry a son, or or allow
8:35
Speaker 1: their son to marry a girl. Who had bound feet,
8:38
Speaker 1: because that was one of the big deals. If you
8:39
Speaker 1: didn't have bound feet, then guys would just pass you over.
8:43
Speaker 1: That's what it took to finally like eradicated. When was that, Uh,
8:48
Speaker 1: that was was that after the nineteen twelve outlaw or
8:51
Speaker 1: the no it was leading up to that was formally outlawed,
8:56
Speaker 1: but they had government inspectors that would come around and
8:59
Speaker 1: make sure you weren't binding feet any longer, and they
9:02
Speaker 1: would like hide girls that they still want to do.
9:04
Speaker 1: So it's like really oppressive and weird because that campaign
9:07
Speaker 1: that you just described is basically point for point trying
9:11
Speaker 1: to undo a thousand years of custom like if you
9:15
Speaker 1: had unbound feet, like natural feet, you were considered a freak.
9:19
Speaker 1: They were ugly, there was something wrong with you. And
9:22
Speaker 1: even more to the point, uh, no man would marry
9:25
Speaker 1: you because bound feet were so idolized in Chinese culture.
9:31
Speaker 1: Um that if you were just totally plain or even
9:36
Speaker 1: horrendously ugly and every other way, but I really knock
9:39
Speaker 1: out bound feet like that was enough for you. You
9:42
Speaker 1: were a butterfly, You're gonna do pretty good. That's um yeah,
9:48
Speaker 1: I mean it's hard to believe now, but when you
9:50
Speaker 1: see these photos in like the X rays and stuff.
9:53
Speaker 1: It's just like total deformation. Yeah, so let's talk about this.
10:17
Speaker 1: There's there's an actual process, fairly straightforward, although extremely painful
10:22
Speaker 1: and dangerous. Um. If you, like I think you said,
10:26
Speaker 1: you you grab like your four year old daughter, you
10:30
Speaker 1: say it's time prepare for a lifetime of pain and
10:33
Speaker 1: suffering starting now. And you take your feet and you
10:37
Speaker 1: soak them in hot water for a few hours in
10:40
Speaker 1: animal blood too. Oh yeah, what did that do? The
10:43
Speaker 1: same thing? Softened? It softened up? Okay, so like that
10:45
Speaker 1: was the whole purposes of the soaking was to soften
10:48
Speaker 1: the skin, make it more pliable, and I imagine the
10:51
Speaker 1: muscles too. Um. And then after the soaking you would
10:54
Speaker 1: scrape away any dead skin. And then after that their
10:57
Speaker 1: toenails were clipped, you know, super short, so they're still kids.
11:01
Speaker 1: Are like, Okay, I don't really like the tonio clipping part,
11:03
Speaker 1: but the foot soak more than makes up for it. Um,
11:06
Speaker 1: And boy do I really It turns out I like
11:08
Speaker 1: animal blood, so can my feet in it? And then um,
11:13
Speaker 1: the the either their mom or maybe a learned woman
11:16
Speaker 1: in the village would say, all right, now we're going
11:19
Speaker 1: to start bending your foot. Ye. Who imagine these ladies too,
11:22
Speaker 1: if they were the village lady that did it, they
11:24
Speaker 1: probably didn't take much guph No, probably not. You know,
11:27
Speaker 1: they probably don't mess around. Imagine they came in there
11:30
Speaker 1: and just sort of took care of business like they've
11:32
Speaker 1: heard it all before. But for his is grizzly and
11:37
Speaker 1: grotesque or procedure. It's actually a delicate procedure too, because
11:42
Speaker 1: if if you can wrap your mind around less, there's
11:44
Speaker 1: ways to do it wrong that can lead to problems. Good,
11:48
Speaker 1: there's actual risk factors. So uh, the one other thing
11:51
Speaker 1: I left out was a sprinkled talc in there to
11:53
Speaker 1: keep it from perspiring because you wanted to be dry.
11:57
Speaker 1: And then they start bending things right, yeah, Well then
11:59
Speaker 1: the cotton comes out the bandages about two inches uh wide,
12:03
Speaker 1: about ten feet long, and they would soak those in
12:06
Speaker 1: the hot water and blood and herbs as well, because
12:09
Speaker 1: they want those to shrink up. It's all about shrinking.
12:12
Speaker 1: They want those to shrink up. After they're applied to
12:14
Speaker 1: the feet. Um and then the old lady comes up
12:18
Speaker 1: and she folds the little four toes that were just clipped,
12:23
Speaker 1: not the big toe under as far as she can
12:26
Speaker 1: and then starts to do little figure eights to keep
12:29
Speaker 1: them in place. You leave the big toe exposed, yes,
12:35
Speaker 1: and you leave the big toe exposed in the heel exposed,
12:37
Speaker 1: and you just cinch those little front toes under. They
12:41
Speaker 1: break the toes, it breaks the foot bones. It sounds
12:45
Speaker 1: horrific because it is. And it brings the heel closer
12:48
Speaker 1: towards the ball of the foot. So the point of
12:51
Speaker 1: your feet is now your big toe, The slightly wider
12:54
Speaker 1: part behind it is the ball of your foot, and
12:57
Speaker 1: then behind that is your heel, and underneath it all
13:00
Speaker 1: your four poor, poor little toasts and the top of
13:03
Speaker 1: your foot is that this really unreasonable, odd looking arch.
13:07
Speaker 1: And because that's like you're in a high heel. Yeah.
13:09
Speaker 1: By making it arched, you're bringing your allowing that distance
13:13
Speaker 1: that was once between the ball of the foot and
13:16
Speaker 1: the heel to go up rather than between the two.
13:19
Speaker 1: You're bringing them together. And so all this has just
13:22
Speaker 1: been done to a four year old four years probably
13:24
Speaker 1: crying in pain. And after you've finished with the bandages, um,
13:28
Speaker 1: the old lady or the mom would probably sew them because,
13:31
Speaker 1: especially if you're dealing with a four year old it's
13:33
Speaker 1: going to try to get these things off. Um. And
13:36
Speaker 1: then they say, all right, start walking. Yeah, they put
13:39
Speaker 1: a little shoe on there, and that the first steps
13:42
Speaker 1: with these things. And imagine many steps after order excruciating,
13:45
Speaker 1: the painful. Yeah you know. Well yeah, um, here's the
13:50
Speaker 1: here's the craziest part. If you ask me, you do
13:54
Speaker 1: this every day for years, well every couple of days, okay,
13:58
Speaker 1: every day or every other day is what I them
14:00
Speaker 1: to diminish it. Yet for a couple of years. It
14:02
Speaker 1: takes a couple of a few years for these things
14:05
Speaker 1: to be fully deformed into what are called the lotus
14:09
Speaker 1: petals or new moons or whatever. Because it's a bandage,
14:13
Speaker 1: you know, you you unbind and they actually would like
14:16
Speaker 1: need the broken foot, keep it broken and uh dry
14:21
Speaker 1: it all out real good because infection, like the toes
14:24
Speaker 1: would cut into the foot if they weren't clipped properly.
14:26
Speaker 1: So infection and gang green it's too tight all big
14:30
Speaker 1: threats to like losing their feet, right, because if you wrap,
14:33
Speaker 1: if you wrap them too tight, they can become gangrenous
14:35
Speaker 1: because you get gang green, which is a massive loss
14:38
Speaker 1: of dead tissue UM due to to poor circulation UM.
14:42
Speaker 1: So the foot could just fall off. And like you
14:44
Speaker 1: were saying, if you don't clip the toe nails, chuck,
14:46
Speaker 1: like you have to do that every day or every
14:49
Speaker 1: time you you unwrap and then wrap your feet. And
14:52
Speaker 1: then even worse than that, if you didn't wrap them
14:55
Speaker 1: pretty quickly after you bathe them every day or the
14:58
Speaker 1: other day, um, the it could start to lose their shape,
15:01
Speaker 1: which apparently was as painful as in the initial footbinding procedure. Yeah,
15:07
Speaker 1: like once your foot has started to take shape, if
15:09
Speaker 1: you wanted to say, now you know what, I don't
15:10
Speaker 1: want to do this anymore. It's just as painful for
15:14
Speaker 1: the foot to undo itself because it's already like malformed.
15:17
Speaker 1: But there was like you didn't think that. I think
15:20
Speaker 1: once once this happened to you from your mom or whatever,
15:24
Speaker 1: and you grew a little older and you started to
15:26
Speaker 1: take over for yourself and you were bathing and wrapping
15:29
Speaker 1: your own street every other day. You understood why you
15:33
Speaker 1: were doing this because footbinding was so important that you
15:37
Speaker 1: could be just completely poverty stricken and some rich dude
15:41
Speaker 1: would still be like, I like your feet a lot,
15:43
Speaker 1: and yeah, I can't even breathe right now because your
15:49
Speaker 1: feet are so deformed, um that I want to marry you.
15:52
Speaker 1: It's so weird. Yeah. So there's uh and beyond being
15:56
Speaker 1: wrong and gross and oppressive and all that stuff, it
16:00
Speaker 1: was just so odd to me that that was like
16:03
Speaker 1: a turn on. Yeah, and man, it was a turn on.
16:07
Speaker 1: Like footbinding was highly highly erotic. You guys like nice feet,
16:11
Speaker 1: trust me, I get that, but these deformed Uh, I
16:17
Speaker 1: just don't get it. But this is pretty much a
16:19
Speaker 1: national foot fetish. Yeah. Um. And it was nationalized, it
16:22
Speaker 1: was cultural, and it was extraordinarily widespread. Like we said,
16:26
Speaker 1: about three billion women over the course of a thousand
16:28
Speaker 1: years um bound their feet. Yeah. And it had a
16:32
Speaker 1: lot of odd effects side effects that went along with it. Um,
16:36
Speaker 1: when three billion people do something that hobbles them, there
16:40
Speaker 1: are going to be some weird repercussions. Yeah that you
16:42
Speaker 1: don't think about. Um. One thing it definitely did was
16:46
Speaker 1: it foster dominance over women because of the simple fact
16:51
Speaker 1: that if a woman's being beaten, she can't run away. Um,
16:55
Speaker 1: a woman can't travel very far period, so they're going
16:57
Speaker 1: to hang around their village, in their house, and so
17:01
Speaker 1: it just you know, it's like hobbling somebody all of
17:04
Speaker 1: a sudden they can't get around as well, so they're
17:07
Speaker 1: just dependent on you, right, and they really aren't traveling much,
17:12
Speaker 1: not a lot of traveling going on on your feet
17:14
Speaker 1: are bound. Um. And then also the fact that you
17:17
Speaker 1: they have women with bound feet had trouble walking UM
17:22
Speaker 1: meant that the architecture of China kind of was created
17:26
Speaker 1: to help this out. Like they had to lean on
17:29
Speaker 1: windows or walls. I mean, so buildings were built close
17:33
Speaker 1: together so the average woman could could you know, lean
17:36
Speaker 1: on a wall whilst she was walking. Yeah, and there
17:39
Speaker 1: weren't a lot of six story walk ups in in
17:42
Speaker 1: ancient China, man, that would have been cruel. Everything was
17:45
Speaker 1: one story as a result, so it yeah, it had
17:47
Speaker 1: a weird impact on the architecture in uh what else colonization, Yeah,
17:54
Speaker 1: that was a really big one that yeah. Um, you know,
17:57
Speaker 1: most people realize that China didn't do a lot of
18:00
Speaker 1: exploring um while the rest of the world was. It
18:02
Speaker 1: just kind of isolated itself and shut itself off. And
18:05
Speaker 1: one of the um reasons given for that was that
18:09
Speaker 1: the women were foot bound and they couldn't travel like um,
18:14
Speaker 1: women in other countries who could walk normally did UM.
18:18
Speaker 1: So with the Chinese women unable to travel, and um,
18:22
Speaker 1: I guess see the sites. Uh, their men didn't want
18:26
Speaker 1: to leave them, so they stayed at home. Yeah. And
18:29
Speaker 1: actually the areas that didn't practice footbinding are the ones
18:34
Speaker 1: that actually did go out and colonize other places, like
18:36
Speaker 1: the Philippines. They were so Southern China. Yeah, or the
18:40
Speaker 1: Old West like every Great Old West show has, like
18:42
Speaker 1: the one Chinese immigrant family with the ponytails. Yeah. Um.
18:47
Speaker 1: The article points out, like we're being hard on it
18:49
Speaker 1: because it's easy to look and today it's some antiquated
18:53
Speaker 1: practice is really cruel and unusual and weird. But um,
18:57
Speaker 1: at the time they in the women you know, wanted
19:01
Speaker 1: their feet bound. There were great bonds between the generations
19:04
Speaker 1: because it was such a cultural thing between the women.
19:07
Speaker 1: They would sew their shoes together. Um. I listened to
19:10
Speaker 1: this one MPR Fresh Air that interviewed someone some of
19:13
Speaker 1: these old Chinese ladies that still you know, are some
19:16
Speaker 1: of the last surviving ones, and a couple of them said,
19:19
Speaker 1: you know, I really regret it now, it's been a
19:21
Speaker 1: lifetime of pain. But most of them said, no, we
19:25
Speaker 1: wanted to do it. And this was I'm very proud
19:27
Speaker 1: of the fact that we did this. Yeah, and these
19:29
Speaker 1: are these are women who are confronted with the outside
19:32
Speaker 1: world and they still feel pride about their bound feet.
19:35
Speaker 1: You can imagine how much pride a woman had in
19:37
Speaker 1: her bound feet while it was the norm, you know,
19:41
Speaker 1: because it was basically the norm in China, and these
19:43
Speaker 1: women weren't going out anywhere else. So if you had
19:46
Speaker 1: really nice bound feet, that was a huge point of
19:48
Speaker 1: pride for you. So one of the other weird things
19:52
Speaker 1: we need to talk about is sexy time, because we
19:55
Speaker 1: talked about foot fetishes and things, but it really like
19:59
Speaker 1: something happen and in the water at this time where
20:03
Speaker 1: Chinese men really really got into it and they would
20:07
Speaker 1: take the shoe off in these odd deformed feet and
20:10
Speaker 1: they would like do weird things like drink the water
20:13
Speaker 1: that they bathe their feet in, or put nuts between
20:16
Speaker 1: the toes and eat the nuts from their toes, and uh,
20:20
Speaker 1: just really odd things. I also read that it became
20:23
Speaker 1: a another orifice. I guess if you can imagine, oh
20:28
Speaker 1: really yeah, and even outside of that, I guess one
20:33
Speaker 1: of the more normal things to do is to bury
20:35
Speaker 1: your face in the center of the bottom of the
20:37
Speaker 1: foot and really get like a good whiff boat motor boat. Notice,
20:43
Speaker 1: smell it and then chuck. We should point out that
20:46
Speaker 1: if you're doing that, if you're burying your face in
20:50
Speaker 1: the deformed foot of a foot bound woman. Um, one
20:54
Speaker 1: of the things that happens pretty commonly when your feet
20:57
Speaker 1: are bound is that they developed pustules that break and stink.
21:03
Speaker 1: And so there is a I read one guy a
21:06
Speaker 1: contemporary report from several centuries ago saying like, there's no
21:10
Speaker 1: other smell like it in the world, Nothing as sexy
21:13
Speaker 1: as a deformed foot with leaking, stinky pustules. Yeah. So um, yeah,
21:18
Speaker 1: there was a definite fetish that grew up around it.
21:21
Speaker 1: There was a UM at least one sex manual released
21:25
Speaker 1: with I think forty eight different um things to do
21:28
Speaker 1: with um and uh, there the shoes. We didn't talk
21:35
Speaker 1: about the shoes if they play a role in that
21:37
Speaker 1: eroticism as well. All about the strengthening of the muscles,
21:42
Speaker 1: that's a big part. Yeah, yeah, apparently the there was
21:45
Speaker 1: a theory at least that because they had to walk
21:47
Speaker 1: so funny and oddly, that their vaginal muscles were extra
21:52
Speaker 1: strong and thus more pleasurable to the man. So um.
21:57
Speaker 1: And then so the average woman with foot bound shoe
22:00
Speaker 1: or with with bound feet. I'm sorry everybody, Um, she
22:04
Speaker 1: had at least four pairs of shoes you had to
22:07
Speaker 1: or else like there was no point in in having
22:10
Speaker 1: bound feet. You had to have one for each season.
22:12
Speaker 1: Ideally you had at least four pair per season. So
22:15
Speaker 1: sixteen some women had hundreds of these, and they were
22:18
Speaker 1: designed to really like show off, like, hey, look at
22:21
Speaker 1: my bound feet, buddy. You know that's what they were
22:23
Speaker 1: there for. Um. But there was one specific one that
22:26
Speaker 1: were always read. They were your wedding shoes, and inside
22:32
Speaker 1: there was erotic embroidery which the husband, the new husband
22:36
Speaker 1: and the new wife would look at and like try
22:39
Speaker 1: out together. It's kind of an instruction manual for the
22:42
Speaker 1: bride by her mother or the women of the town,
22:46
Speaker 1: like just do this. Here's a picture of what you're
22:48
Speaker 1: supposed to do tonight. Yeah, and slippers period. I think
22:51
Speaker 1: we're just it was almost like the lingerie of the time,
22:54
Speaker 1: because they would the bedroom slippers were more like uh embroidered,
22:58
Speaker 1: like more sexily as well in just your average like
23:01
Speaker 1: you know, I gotta go to the shop and pick
23:03
Speaker 1: up some rice shoes, you know. So the Chinese communists
23:07
Speaker 1: came along now and his comrades and said, you know what,
23:11
Speaker 1: you're a woman. We don't care. Get to work digging
23:13
Speaker 1: ditches and oh your bound feet hurt you. Well, I
23:15
Speaker 1: guess you're gonna starve because we give food based on
23:18
Speaker 1: how much work you did. If you don't do the work,
23:20
Speaker 1: you're gonna starve death. That led to the real conclusion
23:24
Speaker 1: of footbinding, and apparently today they say with great authority
23:27
Speaker 1: that no one does it any longer. Yeah, that's good
23:31
Speaker 1: to know. I'm surprised that it completely died out, because
23:37
Speaker 1: do you think there'd be like some remote families here there?
23:40
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, it's well, welcome to the modern age,
23:45
Speaker 1: this is what I say. And that just a bizarre,
23:48
Speaker 1: strange chapter, thousand year chapter and one of the most
23:52
Speaker 1: populous nations on the planet's history, and very few people
23:57
Speaker 1: know about it. Well, now a lot more people do,
24:00
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh, you got anything else? No, you know,
24:03
Speaker 1: you can't, like there's no place we can direct people
24:06
Speaker 1: to voice their outrage because it doesn't happen anymore. No,
24:09
Speaker 1: but I'm sure we're gonna get a lot of suggestions
24:10
Speaker 1: for female genital mutilation, and we should probably do that one.
24:13
Speaker 1: Female circumcision. We haven't done that. No, we did male circumcision.
24:17
Speaker 1: I don't think we talked about female. I think we'd
24:20
Speaker 1: like mentioned it, said we'll do that later. Oh, well,
24:22
Speaker 1: there you have it. We'll do it again. Uh So,
24:25
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about foot binding and
24:27
Speaker 1: see some pictures of some um unshod bound feet, you
24:33
Speaker 1: can type foot binding in the search bar how stuff
24:36
Speaker 1: works dot com and will bring up this article. And
24:38
Speaker 1: I said search bar, which means it's time for a message.
24:41
Speaker 1: Break all right now, listener mail right, that's right, I'm
25:17
Speaker 1: gonna call this. We're plugging something, and we when we
25:20
Speaker 1: asked to plug things, we get a lot of people
25:22
Speaker 1: right in for like good charities, and we can only
25:26
Speaker 1: do a certain amount of otherwise we'd be reading charity
25:29
Speaker 1: plugs all the time. So apologies to those who don't
25:32
Speaker 1: get there's read. But this is from Kate. Have a nicht,
25:36
Speaker 1: she said, don't wry about saying my last name wrong.
25:39
Speaker 1: No one does. If you just did you get a
25:41
Speaker 1: fruit basket? I demand one. It's got to be German.
25:45
Speaker 1: That's good stuff. She lives in Bozeman, Montana. She says
25:48
Speaker 1: it's the most beautiful place on Earth. And she's just
25:50
Speaker 1: been listening for a few months because her brother Jack
25:53
Speaker 1: is awesome and turned her onto it. I'm ready to
25:55
Speaker 1: go to Jack. So during listener mail, guys, you uh
25:59
Speaker 1: supported some the awesome charities and groups that try to
26:02
Speaker 1: make the role a better place. A friend of mine
26:03
Speaker 1: works for such a place. It's a coffee brewing company
26:06
Speaker 1: called Brown Water Coffee, which got started here in Bozeman
26:09
Speaker 1: a few years ago and is now based in Denver.
26:11
Speaker 1: The great thing about these guys is it fift cent
26:14
Speaker 1: of their profits go directly to getting clean water to
26:17
Speaker 1: those who need it, hence the great double meeting of
26:19
Speaker 1: the name brown Water. Uh. They're also a small company
26:22
Speaker 1: with only a handful of employees, but so far I've
26:24
Speaker 1: done an amazing job. Not only is it a great cause,
26:27
Speaker 1: but their package design is awesome. And I can say
26:30
Speaker 1: that because I'm a recent drad of graphic design from
26:32
Speaker 1: Montana State University. Go Bobcats. The coffee is fantastic. Actually,
26:38
Speaker 1: it's really some of the best I've ever had, so
26:40
Speaker 1: she highly recommends seriously. They sell it in shops mostly
26:43
Speaker 1: in the Northwest at the moment, so unfortunately won't be
26:46
Speaker 1: able to get your hands on it, but if you
26:47
Speaker 1: send me an address, I would be more than happy
26:49
Speaker 1: to send them along. Do they sell it online? You
26:53
Speaker 1: would think, so sell it online, she said, check them
26:55
Speaker 1: out on Facebook. Soon they will have their website back
26:57
Speaker 1: up and running after a quick redesign, so I'd be
27:00
Speaker 1: at static if you mentioned them on the show. Shout
27:03
Speaker 1: out to Ricky owner and founder, and Katie graphic designer
27:06
Speaker 1: and Stevie who was the master brewer at Brown Water Coffee.
27:09
Speaker 1: So hopefully by the time this comes out, they'll have
27:12
Speaker 1: their website up and running. So I imagine if you
27:14
Speaker 1: search for brown Water Coffee it would come up, right,
27:17
Speaker 1: I would think in this day and age, you've got
27:19
Speaker 1: to be able to find something out online. I would
27:21
Speaker 1: think so by the time that comes up, So get
27:23
Speaker 1: with it, Brownwater Coffee. If you haven't already, Thank you, Kate. Yeah,
27:27
Speaker 1: thanks for writing and Kate, it's pretty awesome of you.
27:29
Speaker 1: I feel like they owe you some coffee or something
27:32
Speaker 1: for that. Sure. Um, if you have a awesome nonprofit
27:37
Speaker 1: organization charity that we can help out by giving a plug, um,
27:41
Speaker 1: you can send stuff to our Twitter handle at symbol
27:45
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast all one word uh. You
27:50
Speaker 1: can join us on Facebook, dot com slash stuff you
27:53
Speaker 1: Should Know and check out our website. It's got some
27:56
Speaker 1: good stuff on it. It's called Stuff you Should Know
27:59
Speaker 1: dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
28:07
Speaker 1: visit how Stuff Works dot com. M