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clay dubeFootbinding 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.
http://www.movingimages.bc.ca/catalogue/Cultdiverse/footbinding.html
clay dubeCalifornia 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.
http://www.movingimages.bc.ca/catalogue/Cultdiverse/footbinding.html
clay dubeSince you are reading this, accessing the forum is not a problem for you. Still, you might appreciate access to a copy of the forum guide. It is attached in .pdf format.
The forum offers several advantages over email discussion lists, these include:
[Edit by="Clay Dube on May 6, 7:52:02 PM"][/Edit]
clay dubeEd -- To get the html coding to work you need to be using Mozilla, Netscape, or Firefox. If you are using Internet Explorer, you can use the formatting tools.
The style and font commands, however, do not always display properly. Highlighting, bold, italics, color, underline, and links do work.
Embedding a graphic is also possible with IE. Please, do not embed graphics -- they create a number of problems if they are too large. Instead, copy the graphic to your hard drive and then upload it as an attached file. Then other forum members can decide if they want to see it and download it. " target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.international.ucla.edu/asia/images/uclaasiainstitute.gif [Edit by="Clay Dube on May 6, 9:51:05 AM"][/Edit]
clay dubeMost of you have the reader table of contents. In case you don't, I've attached a copy in .pdf format. Simply click on the icon beside the file name to open the file using Adobe Acrobat Reader, a free program.
clay dubeHere is another version of the reader in .pdf format. (100 schools.pdf) To download files, simply click on the icon beside the file name. [Edit by="Clay Dube on May 5, 4:02:02 PM"][/Edit]
clay dubeCongratulations on the great results, Jonathan! We're happy for you, for Connie and your family, and for ourselves. You've made this trip possible.
clay dubeA copy of the seminar assignment is attached. The core requirements are active participation in each of the seminar's sessions, discussion via this web forum and the Asia in My Classroom web forum, construction of a simple web page, and the creation of a unit -- using materials and methods introduced in the seminar -- to use with your students.
clay dubeDavid Schaberg will not be able to be with us on Saturday. We will, however, briefly review some of the poems he's selected and discuss the place of poetry in China.
We will not use the computer lab on Saturday -- instead we'll use it on Tuesday, May 11.
On Saturday, May 8, we'll:
1. Discuss Chinese philosophy and have a four sided debate among proponents of Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and Legalism.
2. Examine the early Chinese empire: the Qin and Han dynasties.
3. Discuss Cosmopolitan East Asia, Chinese literature 200-1300 with distinguished scholar Yang Ye, UC Riverside.
clay dubeWe'll spend a lot of time at Beijing University (Beida as the Chinese call it, or Peking University at the PKU's marketing department pushes it) -- here are some web resources you might find interesting:
1996 American teacher on bringing Tiananmen account to her Beida students
http://www.dcn.davis.ca.us/go/gizmo/gizmochinablues.html
1998 Beida students protest anti-Chinese attacks in Indonesia
http://www.huaren.org/focus/id/081298-03.html
1999 AsiaWeek reporter looks unsuccessfully for radicals at Beida
http://www.asiaweek.com/asiaweek/99/0604/sr3.html
2001 spy plane demonstration
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~dcc/pub/china/china_free_speech.html
2003 students sent up info booth on Iraq war
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/iraqwar/story/0,4395,180419,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/story/0,12809,926151,00.html
2003 campus bombing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,902674,00.html
clay dubeThe Schools -- feel free to use the discussion forum to begin to identify the most useful passages/challenges
Have I missed anyone?
clay dubeThe questions to be debated on Sat., May 8 are:
Is education necessary? What is a well-educated person? What would such a person know and what could s/he do?
To whom or what does a person owe loyalty? What is the nature of this loyalty? Are there any limits to such an obligation?
What would the ideal society look like? How would it be organized? What role, if any, does government have in such a society? Can government help to create an ideal society? Be sure to consider issues such as social stratification, relations among people, and the qualifications/responsibilities of leaders.
In addition to fully understanding your own school's positions on these matters, you'll also need to know the views of your challengers so as to offer an adequate defense and to note the shortcomings of other schools.
clay dubeThere are two chief restrictions luggage-wise. The first is that
clay dubeChinese women do wear shorts while at home and at leisure, but skirts and dresses are the norm at work and are also common at home, while shopping, and sightseeing.
It will be hot and in several places it will also be humid.
clay dubeTwo books worth looking at to understand how politics, philosophies, and practices have produced an environmental crisis in China:
Vaclav Smil (also author of the excellent, though dated The Bad Earth), China's Past, China's Future: Energy, Food, EnvironmentCurzon Press, 2004.
Judith Shapiro (co-author with then husband Liang Heng of the classic Son of the Revolution), Mao's War Against Nature, Cambridge UP, 2001.
