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How Foot Binding Worked · Stuff You Should Know

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