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One Thousand Years of Chinese Footbinding: Its Origins, Popularity and In addressing the subject of footbinding, one primary difficulty becomes apparent - that much remains within the realm of the unknowable. Any factual knowledge about the practice may only be dr ....

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.... socially and geographically as the lower cl asses strove to imitate the style of the elite. [3] In its most extreme form, footbinding was the act of wrapping a three- to five-year old girl's feet with binding so as to bend the toes under, break the bones and force the back of the foot together. Its purpose was to produce a tiny foot, the "golden lotus", which was three inches long and thought to be both lovely and alluring.[4] It is believed that the origin of the term "golden lotus" emerged in the Southern Tang dynasty around 920 A.D., where the emperor Li Yu ordered his favorite concubine, Fragrant Girl, to bind her feet with silk band ....