Judi and others,
Thanks for diving into the readings. They have much to offer those who spend a bit of time with them. Judi's absolutely right about how matter-of-fact they are. This is generally true of all family-related legal documents. Household division documents are similarly detailed, in some cases down to the last bowl and set of chopsticks.

The issues surrounding concubines are exceedingly complex. The first point to keep in mind is that only a small portion of households were sufficiently affluent to have more than one woman attached to one man. The second point is that all male off-spring of a concubine were "legitimate", that is to say, equally entitled to inherit names and property as those of the primary wife. And a third point is that this purchase contract emphasizes that the joining is an agreement between two families, not two individuals. This was true of marriages as well as the bringing in of a concubine.

From literature and legal cases, we see that while the acquisition agreement treats the woman as an object, they were very much subjects, in the sense of being actors, taking action, and doing much to determine their own circumstances. Polygamy, of course, catches our eye and its complications fascinated writers and those eager to share gossip in the market and elsewhere. In China's oral tradition and its literature, concubines are often depicted as the an indication of moral failings on the part of the husband or a reasonable response to a cold (arranged) marriage. The American writer Pearl Buck mimicked this in her The Good Earth with the former poor farmer Wang Lung squandering some of the family's resources (as it happens luckily acquired by his kind and loving wife O-lan) on another woman.

Much has been written about families and concubines. One contemporary film with battling wives at its center is Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern. It depicts a household that is in no way typical, but it is a compelling drama.

Ray Moser will be discussing family structures in East Asia at our 12/8 session.

I hope others will join this discussion now and will also take up other readings.

[by the way, footbinding was among the topics I lacked time to cover, we'll take this up as well at the 12/8 session -- this presentation will be given to you on disc]

I always thought the foot-binding practice to be odd... but if we consider more realistically our own Western customs, mannerisms and traditions.. they can also be considered odd.... take men putting lipstick on, getting dressed like women, talking and acting like women. Women wearing those super high heels and walking with knees bent, their feet walking inwardly, their backs arched... and walking around with those little bitsy pocketbooks, putting on all that stuff on their faces in the morning and taking it all of in the evening before going to bed... wearing wigs that really look ridiculous, chopping up their noses, cutting up their stomachs so they won't eat as much, lypo-suction, and who knows what else... all for vanity.... What is to be observed, however, is the fact that it is the woman who effects the changes to herself and it is not the man who compels the woman to do so. The contract to transfer a child-daughter to an adult is a completely different matter... let us, however, not forget, that women's rights were long overdue... and that our own United States of America was allowing women to participate as citizens with the right to vote until, I believe, 1937 !!!!! And that, in England, the society from which the Japanese most directly took model for their new social structure, was using women as "chattel" (= a material object, just like a cow, or a horse) without the right to own any real estate properties until the early 1900s !!!!!

In the US, women weren't given the right to vote until 1920.

"let us, however, not forget, that women's rights were long overdue... and that our own United States of America was allowing women to participate as citizens with the right to vote until, I believe, 1937 !!!!!"

Judi's questions are good ones. I find the practice abhorrent and agree with Judi's point that plastic surgery, tattoos, piercings, and so on are generally undertaken by adults (well informed adults? that's another question, sober adults, yet another question). Also, these are generally reversible (not pain-free and not necessarily easy, but reversible). Footbinding was carried out on children by adults and left them permanently injured.

Footbinding is one of the topics that every teacher needs to discuss when looking at the varying experiences of Chinese women. It emerges about a thousand years ago and survived into the last century.

Not all women had their feet bound. Many non-Han ethnic groups such as the Hakka and Manchus did not bind their women's feet and it was much less common among ordinary people in the South than it was in the North, probably because women in the South usually joined in agricultural labor.

How are we to understand this custom and role men and women played in perpetuating it? How should we raise the topic with children? Is it enough to note that our own culture imposes standards of beauty that cause some to endure suffering, surgery, or psychological damage?

Below are some web resources on footbinding that you may find interesting.

California resident Beverly Jackson is a longtime collector of the shoes worn by Chinese women with bound feet. She traveled to China and interviewed women who had their feet bound and produced a lavishly illustrated volume Splendid Slippers. Her website offers short excerpts from the book, reviews of it, and -- of course -- a link to buy the volume. Combined with works by Howard Levy and Dorothy Ko, this is a good resource to draw upon in introducing the practice to students.

http://www.silcom.com/~bevjack/

Levy, Howard S. Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom, Foreword by Arthur Waley. Introd. by Wolfram Eberhard. New York, W. Rawls, 1966.

Ko, Dorothy. Every Step a Lotus : Shoes for Bound Feet. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001. Click here to see the UC Press webpage on the book. You can download and read chapter 2. It includes terrific images. Prof. Ko has also written "The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-Century China," The Journal of Women's History 8.4.

Feng Jicai, one of China's most popular writers, authored an interesting novel on the custom and its place in family and social life. Three Inch Golden Lotus. It was translated by David Wakefield and published by the University of Hawaii Press.

Yue-qing Yang's recent film Footbinding: The Search for the Three-Inch Golden Lotus is available and includes interviews with Chinese about the custom. In the film, Dorothy Ko argues that footbinding is routinely misunderstood.[Edit by="Clay Dube on Jan 11, 5:01:53 PM"][/Edit]

I don't understand the whole double eyelid surgery. I remember growing up all my relatives would tell me it was such a shame that I didn't have the double eye lid, and my mother would always get mad at them. Then recently, she started asking me if I wanted to get it, and that she would help pay for it. It really is seen as a standard of beauty in East Asia, especially in Korea. I honestly have a hard time differentiating the different Korean actresses because they all look exactly the same. They must all go to the same plastic surgeon, because they have the same eyes, nose, and chin.