history

“Beaches” with Bound Feet – footbinding and female friendship

/ Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

In Chinese tradition, where marriages were made for social or business reasons and where women – especially those with tiny bound feet – were seen as trophies, there was a recognition that women would not find much emotional comfort, love or meaningful human connection with their husbands.

So as part of this tradition, girls were given “sworn sisters”  who would be their emotional partner – rather like the “blood brothers” relationship that boys would have. These formally sanctioned and socially accepted partnerships were known as “laotongs”.

I learnt about this intriguing custom from the film Snow Flower and The Secret Fan which I discovered over the weekend, based on the novel by Lisa See. How had I not known about this touching tradition before now!

Here is the official movie trailer:

The movie is about two female friendships, one set in modern Shanghai and the other in 19th century China, during the Boxer Rebellion. The same two actresses portray the two pairs of friends. The arc of the story has echoes Continue reading →

Experience London’s Chinese history “on location” in Limehouse – The Last Days of Limehouse [live show]

/ Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

It’s rare to see theatre pieces in the UK about the Chinese experience of life and featuring Chinese actors. So I’m excited that Yellow Earth Theatre are putting on The Last Days of Limehouse,  a live drama about the Chinese community in Limehouse, London’s original Chinatown.

LimehouseMarketing Image

From the Half Moon Theatre website, with thanks

 

It is a promenade show, which means that it different scenes are enacted in different locations and the audience moves from place to place as the story progresses. The show starts at Limehouse Town Hall where it dramatizes a town hall meeting that took place in 1958 in that very same building. From there, the story will unfold in Continue reading →

Bound Feet Blues – Researching My Great Grandmother’s Journey from China to Malaya by Junk

/ Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

I am now working on the second half of Bound Feet Blues. There is very little factual information or evidence in our family stories about my great grandmother. All we know is that at some point, as an adult, she left China and travelled to Malaya where she would meet the man who would become my great grandfather. We have no information about where she lived in China or which port she would have left from or arrived at.

I want to insert a line in Bound Feet Blues about how long the journey by sea would have taken her eg “It was a ….. days or …. weeks journey”.

For that single sentence, I looked at Continue reading →

Bound Feet Blues: Why did Chinese women have bound feet?

/ Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

I’ve been researching the history of bound feet for my solo performance piece Bound Feet Blues.

According to Wikipedia

Bound feet became a mark of beauty and was also a prerequisite for finding a husband. It also became an avenue for poorer women to marry into money; for example, in Guangdong in the late 19th century, it was customary to bind the feet of the eldest daughter of a lower-class family who was intended to be brought up as a lady. Her younger sisters would grow up to be bond-servants or domestic slaves and, when old enough, either the concubines of rich men or the wives of laboring men, able to work in the fields alongside them. In contrast, the tiny, narrow feet of the “ladies” were considered beautiful and made a woman’s movements more feminine and dainty, and it was assumed these eldest daughters would never need to work. Women, their families, and their husbands took great pride in tiny feet, with the ideal length, called the “Golden Lotus”, being about 7 cm (3 inches) long.[7] This pride was reflected in the elegantly embroidered silk slippers and wrappings girls and women wore to cover their feet. Walking on bound feet necessitated bending the knees slightly and swaying to maintain proper movement and balance, a dainty walk that was also considered erotic to men.[8]

 

 

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding

Bound Feet Blues: Inside the mind of a woman crippled by bound feet in ancient China

/ Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

What was it like to be a woman crippled by bound feet? This question has always haunted me ever since I was a child when I  learnt about the bound feet women in China.

I have been researching this question for my story performance Bound Feet Blues.

You can read my essay about the practice of footbinding and how it affected generations of women emotionally and pyschologically over at my main blog StoryGuru.co.uk: see “Bound Feet Blues: What was it like to be a woman crippled by bound feet in ancient China?”

“For a thousand years, women crippled their daughters to create perfect dainty little bound feet which were beloved by men and became the currency for a good marriage. What was it like to be one of those women? Why did they carry on such a cruel practice? 

…. [READ MORE]”

 

 

Photo: flyer for Bound Feet Blues – A Life Told in Shoes – from the author’s personal archive

 

 

Solo Performance: Bound Feet Blues – A Life Told in Shoes (work in progress)

/ Yang-May Ooi / Leave a comment

In Chinese tradition, women with tiny bound feet were desirable as wives and lovers, their delicate feet seen as objects of both status and sexual fetish. In her first full length storytelling piece Bound Feet Blues – A Life Told in Shoes, Chinese-Malaysian story performer Yang-May Ooi explores themes of female desirability, identity and empowerment in this personal story told through the shoes in her life.

The image of Chinese women with bound feet has haunted me since I was a child. I think of these women who have been crippled for life ever since they were 4 years old, unable to walk, with broken stumps for feet beneath the delicately embroidered silk shoes. Just so they can appear to have little, dainty feet and seem to be elegant and graceful – and therefore desirable and marriageable.

Small Feet

I’ve always had small, delicate feet. My shoe size is 3.5 and it’s a real problem trying to Continue reading →