Editing Foot binding (section)

=== Origin ===
[[File:Yaoniang binding feet.jpg|thumb|200px|alt=A black and white stylised illustration of a seated woman, one foot resting on top of her left thigh, wrapping and binding her right foot.|18th-century illustration showing Yao Niang binding her own feet]]
There are a number of stories about the origin of foot binding before its establishment during the [[Song dynasty]]. One of these accounts is of [[Pan Yunu]], a favourite consort of the [[Southern Qi]] Emperor [[Xiao Baojuan]]. In the story, Pan Yunu, renowned for having delicate feet, performed a dance barefoot on a floor decorated with the design of a golden lotus. The Emperor, expressing admiration, said that "lotus springs from her every step!" ({{transliteration|zh|bù bù shēng lián}} {{lang|zh|歩歩生蓮}}), a reference to the [[Buddhism|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 no evidence, however, that Consort Pan ever bound her feet.{{sfn|Ko|2002|pp=32–34}}

The general view is that the practice is likely to have originated during the reign of the 10th-century Emperor [[Li Yu (Southern Tang)|Li Yu]] of the [[Southern Tang]], just before the Song dynasty.<ref name="bbc">{{cite web |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ptop/alabaster/A1155872 |title=Chinese Foot Binding |publisher=BBC |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131118153249/https://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ptop/alabaster/A1155872 |archive-date=2013-11-18 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Li Yu created a {{convert|6|ft|m|1|order=flip|adj=mid|-tall|sp=us}} golden lotus decorated with precious stones and pearls and asked his concubine Yao Niang {{lang|zh|(窅娘)}} to bind her feet in white silk into the shape of the crescent moon. She then performed a dance on the points of her bound feet on the lotus.<ref name="bbc"/> Yao Niang's dance was said to be so graceful that others sought to imitate her.{{sfn|Ko|2002|pp=42}} The binding of feet was then replicated by other upper-class women and the practice spread.<ref name="pitts-taylor">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=66u24WAyO_YC&pg=PA203 |title=Cultural Encyclopedia of the Body |page=203 |editor=Victoria Pitts-Taylor |publisher=Greenwood |date=2008 |isbn=978-0-313-34145-8}}</ref>

Some of the earliest possible references to foot binding appear around 1100, when a couple of poems seemed to allude to the practice.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://trc-leiden.nl/trc-needles/index.php/component/k2/item/10758-han-chinese-footbinding |title=Han Chinese Footbinding |work=Textile Research Centre}}</ref><ref>Xu Ji 徐積 《詠蔡家婦》： 「但知勒四支，不知裹两足。」(translation: "knowing about arranging the four limbs, but not about binding her two feet); [[Su Shi]] 蘇軾 《菩薩蠻》：「塗香莫惜蓮承步，長愁羅襪凌波去；只見舞回風，都無行處踪。偷穿宮樣穩，並立雙趺困，纖妙說應難，須從掌上看。」</ref><ref name="ebrey 1">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xjoLCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA38 |title=The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period |author=Patricia Buckley Ebrey |pages=37–39 |isbn=9780520913486 |publisher=University of California Press |date=1 December 1993}}</ref><ref name="Morris2011"/> Soon after 1148,<ref name="Morris2011"/> in the earliest extant discourse on the practice of foot binding, scholar {{Interlanguage link|Zhang Bangji|zh|3=張邦基}} wrote that a bound foot should be arch shaped and small.{{sfn|Ko|2005|p=111–115}}<ref>{{cite web |url= http://wenxian.fanren8.com/08/05/5/8.htm |title= 墨庄漫录-宋-张邦基 8-卷八 |access-date= 2015-02-21 |archive-date= 2015-02-21 |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150221045249/http://wenxian.fanren8.com/08/05/5/8.htm |url-status= dead }}</ref> He observed that "women's foot binding began in recent times; it was not mentioned in any books from previous eras."<ref name="Morris2011">{{cite book |last=Morris |first=Ian |author-link=Ian Morris (historian) |title=Why the West Rules - For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=qNVrfoSubmIC&pg=PA424 |date=2011 |publisher=McClelland & Stewart |isbn=978-1-55199-581-6 |page=424}}</ref> In the 13th&nbsp;century, scholar {{Interlanguage link|Che Ruoshui|zh|3=车若水}} wrote the first known criticism of the practice: "Little girls not yet four or five years old, who have done nothing wrong, nevertheless are made to suffer unlimited pain to bind [their feet] small. I do not know what use this is."<ref name="Morris2011"/><ref name="china chic">{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Lw1_yKwk_XkC&pg=PA38 |pages=38–40 |title=China Chic: East Meets West |author1=Valerie Steele |author2=John S. Major |publisher=Yale University Press |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-300-07931-9}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&chapter=694711&remap=gb |title=脚气集 |author=车若水}} Original text: 妇人纒脚不知起于何时，小儿未四五岁，无罪无辜而使之受无限之苦，纒得小来不知何用。</ref>
[[File:雜劇人物圖.jpg|thumb|[[Southern Song]] ''[[zaju]]'' actresses with a form of footbinding of the period<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.chnmus.net/ch/collection/appraise/details.html?id=512157774779383594|title=绿绸绣花鞋 |work=Henan Museum }}</ref>]]
The earliest archeological evidence for foot binding dates to the tombs of Huang Sheng, who died in 1243 at the age of 17, and Madame Zhou, who died in 1274. Each woman's remains showed feet bound with gauze strips measuring {{convert|6|ft|m|1|order=flip|abbr=on}} in length. Zhou's skeleton, particularly well preserved, showed that her feet fit into the narrow, pointed slippers that were buried with her.<ref name="Morris2011"/> The style of bound feet found in Song dynasty tombs, where the big toe was bent upwards, appears to be different from 'the 'three-inch golden lotus' of later eras. The more severe form of footbinding may have developed in the 16th&nbsp;century.{{sfn|Ko|2005|pp=187–191}}{{sfn|Ko|2002|pp=21–24}}