What do you think?
Rate this book
Aching For Beauty: Footbinding in China
An exploration of the history and cultural practice of footbinding in China reveals the traditions that contributed to and surrounded its thousand-year enforcement, as well as its related literature, music, contests, and rewards.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2000
19 people are currently reading
316 people want to read
About the author
Wang Ping
263 books82 followersBorn in Shanghai and grew up in the East China Sea. Love the body of water, its sound and smell, love the touch of the muddy beach and golden sand.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
July 25, 2013
The description on the back of "Aching for Beauty" reads: "When Wang Ping was nine years old, she secretly set about binding her feet with elastic bands. Footbinding had by then been outlawed in China, women’s feet “liberated,” but at that young age she desperately wanted the tiny feet her grandmother had–deformed and malodorous as they were."
Unfortunately the cover description is about the most interesting part about this book. I was barely able to get through a couple of chapters before I gave up completely on reading it, despite my early enthusiasm for the subject. The book reads like a master's thesis, which it probably is. I had hoped that it would include some personal insight into the practice. Instead, as is common for students in China, the book borrows heavily from other sources, constantly citing literature and historical interviews with women who had their feet bound. Once I realized this book was more of a research paper about footbinding, I was still on board for awhile. I tried to push through because I wanted to know about the history and culture behind the practice, and I hoped there might even be some analysis or some insight into feminism in China. I do not know if she ever gets to this point because, as I said, I gave up on the book after a couple of chapters. The focus is mostly on the fetishization of small feet and the painful bonding between women that footbinding brought about.
I am still interested in this practice and would like to read more. I think that I will seek out the original sources that Ping borrows so heavily from in her book. I have also read that there is a fictional book about this subject that is much better (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See), which I will probably download on my Kindle. I would not recommend this book unless you are planning to do a master's thesis on footbinding or the treatment of women in pre-Mao China. Or if you have lots and lots of patience and perseverance.
Unfortunately the cover description is about the most interesting part about this book. I was barely able to get through a couple of chapters before I gave up completely on reading it, despite my early enthusiasm for the subject. The book reads like a master's thesis, which it probably is. I had hoped that it would include some personal insight into the practice. Instead, as is common for students in China, the book borrows heavily from other sources, constantly citing literature and historical interviews with women who had their feet bound. Once I realized this book was more of a research paper about footbinding, I was still on board for awhile. I tried to push through because I wanted to know about the history and culture behind the practice, and I hoped there might even be some analysis or some insight into feminism in China. I do not know if she ever gets to this point because, as I said, I gave up on the book after a couple of chapters. The focus is mostly on the fetishization of small feet and the painful bonding between women that footbinding brought about.
I am still interested in this practice and would like to read more. I think that I will seek out the original sources that Ping borrows so heavily from in her book. I have also read that there is a fictional book about this subject that is much better (Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See), which I will probably download on my Kindle. I would not recommend this book unless you are planning to do a master's thesis on footbinding or the treatment of women in pre-Mao China. Or if you have lots and lots of patience and perseverance.
May 25, 2013
Someone else said this reads like a dissertation and is thus too boring but, being an academic, I don't think that's the author's problem: instead, I think it's good old fashioned lack of editing. This book is packed with excellent information, well documented stuff on a phenomenon that is difficult to find info about beyond the stylized/theatrical versions of it. This is a combination of women's accounts of their experiences with footbinding, presented in combination with dramaturgical representations of it from famous/period pieces.
It is a bit dry at points, and sometimes it's difficult to follow the narrative (or perhaps the problem is that there isn't one). I still enjoyed it. Having a good book on footbinding was something I'd been looking for after reading (and loving!) Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. See's novel seemed to be a rather accurate representation of the experience of footbinding, a sense I had before reading Ping's work. Now, after having finished Ping's book, I feel I got a more thorough understanding of the (surprisingly long) history of footbinding in China, both actual women's accounts of their experiences as well as stylized theatrical narratives about it (mostly, but not always, filtered through the lens of the male gaze).
This book was a pleasure to read until the (ridiculously long) chapter on psychoanalysis. Then it was like pulling teeth. Full disclosure: I do not like psychoanalysis. I think it's an invention of western white imperialist patriarchy and should've died out with Freud. A book about women and women's culture should simply NOT HAVE SO MANY PENISES. If I wanted penises in my literature, I'd read pretty much any classic book. Skip the chapter on psycho-craptastic-analysis, and the book improves by about 400%.
It is a bit dry at points, and sometimes it's difficult to follow the narrative (or perhaps the problem is that there isn't one). I still enjoyed it. Having a good book on footbinding was something I'd been looking for after reading (and loving!) Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. See's novel seemed to be a rather accurate representation of the experience of footbinding, a sense I had before reading Ping's work. Now, after having finished Ping's book, I feel I got a more thorough understanding of the (surprisingly long) history of footbinding in China, both actual women's accounts of their experiences as well as stylized theatrical narratives about it (mostly, but not always, filtered through the lens of the male gaze).
This book was a pleasure to read until the (ridiculously long) chapter on psychoanalysis. Then it was like pulling teeth. Full disclosure: I do not like psychoanalysis. I think it's an invention of western white imperialist patriarchy and should've died out with Freud. A book about women and women's culture should simply NOT HAVE SO MANY PENISES. If I wanted penises in my literature, I'd read pretty much any classic book. Skip the chapter on psycho-craptastic-analysis, and the book improves by about 400%.
April 21, 2024
This book provides a very detailed history of how, through art, culture, gender, sex, politics, and concepts of civilized/uncivilized, entrenched the practices of footbinding. It is full of so many different perspectives and a good review of older literature from both Chinese scholars and western scholars, even if it does lean towards being a bit dry.
March 24, 2025
The first about 30% is absolutely fascinating, but then it starts to get repetitive. I wasn't really interested in reading about the same erotic fictional tale over and over.
March 4, 2016
Great, graphic and well-researched.
March 8, 2024
Wang Ping's "Aching for Beauty" is an intelligent, thorough, and insightful read. I learned so much in the course of reading this book and relayed as much of that information as I could to anyone that would listen. It was obvious to me that so much work, care, and love was put into this. This is definitely a book that stays with you.
April 12, 2021
An amazing story of traditional life and the customs and society that required it for marriage. Each society has something that seems odd to others until you truly understand the mindset and reasoning behind it. This is a wonderful book that does just that.
August 3, 2021
I don't know. I don't feel like I got what I was looking for. I wanted a thorough examination of footbinding and this was a not well edited wandering through chinese culture.
August 20, 2010
Book Review: Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China, by Wang Ping
In her provocative book, Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China, author Wang Ping attempts to tackle the deeper meanings behind footbinding in China. She begins with a preface in which she describes her personal experience with footbinding. As a nine-year old girl in 1966, Ping had tried to bind her feet to be like her grandmother’s. She then describes an experience twenty years later in 1986, while at a friend’s apartment in the United States she saw a pair of lotus shoes that were only three inches long. She states that, “footbinding was rarely talked or written about because it became a symbol of national shame. But it is high time to lift the taboo…” Ping strives to lift the taboo that covers footbinding and analyze what she calls, “the heritage of my female ancestors, which is now mine.” She analyzes poetry, novels, plays, essays, drawings, and oral accounts that speak of footbinding from the Ming and Qing dynasties to the present.
The author organizes her book into two parts, part I entitled “Chinese Eroticism and Female Allure,” and part II titled “Footbinding in Women’s Literary Traditions.” The first part is broken up into five chapters and includes a brief history of footbinding. Ping analyzes erotic literature in order to better understand the stereotypical views that men held of women and the practice of footbinding. In the fourth chapter, entitled “Edible Beauty: Food and Foot Fetishes in China,” Ping explains the different Chinese fetishes in which food represents sexual organs or actions. In one story she analyzes, “the dishes that the maid brings to the garden – ducks’ feet, fish, lotus seeds, water chestnuts, and pond horned-nuts – are all euphemisms for bound feet.” The author concludes part I describing the practice of ling chi, in which a man is tied to a post and cut into 3600 pieces. Those pieces are then “sold as the most effective medicine for incurable diseases or the most powerful sacrificial food.” Included in the book is a photograph of a man being tortured through the practice of ling chi, it is quite disturbing. Ping connects the practice of footbinding and ling chi and concludes part by stating, “a connection was made between food and sex, eroticism and violence, death and ecstasy.”
Part II looks at footbinding from the perspective of women by analyzing oral histories and writings by women that give insight into the practice. Ping recognizes that footbinding was a part of women’s lives and was practiced solely by them. She searches through poetry and other literature to find signs of footbinding or reactions of women to footbinding and their place in China. The author states notes that bound feet did not just symbolize eroticism and fetishes “but they were also a symbol for self-identity, the emblem of female pride and culture, and most important, the basis for female bonding and support networks.” Women were being bound and binding not purely for the satisfaction of male sexual fantasies but for their own pride and standing in society. The book concludes, effectively, referring to the story told in the preface regarding Ping’s own experience with footbinding as a nine-year old girl. She states, “I was not only trying to create beauty, but also to write/inscribe my personal, political, and cultural signature upon my body.”
Ping’s book is provocative to say the least; her analysis of bound feet as erotic symbols of sex and pain is precise and detailed. At times I was disturbed by the images of pain that were described but these images greatly illustrated the authors arguments. The pictures included further demonstrate the practice. At times I feel the author may have read more into the practice than I would have but her conclusions are not outlandish. She argues her point very successfully and does so in a way that is personal by including her own life experiences. Aching for Beauty serves as a great resource on the practice of footbinding in China in which Ping articulately explains the subject.
In her provocative book, Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China, author Wang Ping attempts to tackle the deeper meanings behind footbinding in China. She begins with a preface in which she describes her personal experience with footbinding. As a nine-year old girl in 1966, Ping had tried to bind her feet to be like her grandmother’s. She then describes an experience twenty years later in 1986, while at a friend’s apartment in the United States she saw a pair of lotus shoes that were only three inches long. She states that, “footbinding was rarely talked or written about because it became a symbol of national shame. But it is high time to lift the taboo…” Ping strives to lift the taboo that covers footbinding and analyze what she calls, “the heritage of my female ancestors, which is now mine.” She analyzes poetry, novels, plays, essays, drawings, and oral accounts that speak of footbinding from the Ming and Qing dynasties to the present.
The author organizes her book into two parts, part I entitled “Chinese Eroticism and Female Allure,” and part II titled “Footbinding in Women’s Literary Traditions.” The first part is broken up into five chapters and includes a brief history of footbinding. Ping analyzes erotic literature in order to better understand the stereotypical views that men held of women and the practice of footbinding. In the fourth chapter, entitled “Edible Beauty: Food and Foot Fetishes in China,” Ping explains the different Chinese fetishes in which food represents sexual organs or actions. In one story she analyzes, “the dishes that the maid brings to the garden – ducks’ feet, fish, lotus seeds, water chestnuts, and pond horned-nuts – are all euphemisms for bound feet.” The author concludes part I describing the practice of ling chi, in which a man is tied to a post and cut into 3600 pieces. Those pieces are then “sold as the most effective medicine for incurable diseases or the most powerful sacrificial food.” Included in the book is a photograph of a man being tortured through the practice of ling chi, it is quite disturbing. Ping connects the practice of footbinding and ling chi and concludes part by stating, “a connection was made between food and sex, eroticism and violence, death and ecstasy.”
Part II looks at footbinding from the perspective of women by analyzing oral histories and writings by women that give insight into the practice. Ping recognizes that footbinding was a part of women’s lives and was practiced solely by them. She searches through poetry and other literature to find signs of footbinding or reactions of women to footbinding and their place in China. The author states notes that bound feet did not just symbolize eroticism and fetishes “but they were also a symbol for self-identity, the emblem of female pride and culture, and most important, the basis for female bonding and support networks.” Women were being bound and binding not purely for the satisfaction of male sexual fantasies but for their own pride and standing in society. The book concludes, effectively, referring to the story told in the preface regarding Ping’s own experience with footbinding as a nine-year old girl. She states, “I was not only trying to create beauty, but also to write/inscribe my personal, political, and cultural signature upon my body.”
Ping’s book is provocative to say the least; her analysis of bound feet as erotic symbols of sex and pain is precise and detailed. At times I was disturbed by the images of pain that were described but these images greatly illustrated the authors arguments. The pictures included further demonstrate the practice. At times I feel the author may have read more into the practice than I would have but her conclusions are not outlandish. She argues her point very successfully and does so in a way that is personal by including her own life experiences. Aching for Beauty serves as a great resource on the practice of footbinding in China in which Ping articulately explains the subject.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 8, 2010
After reading Lisa See's novel, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, I became fascinated with the chinese practice of foot binding. Aching for Beauty was a difficult book to read.. partly because it read like a doctoral dissertation and partly because the ideas presented were very disturbing to me. I tried very hard to maintain an open mind about the practice of foot binding. I really wanted to understand the cultural and social reasons for it. Ping used literary sources such as novels, poems and plays as well as personal accounts of women who had experienced the practice, to reinforce her positions.
It seems that foot binding was done for more than just a symbol of beauty or erotic stimulation for men.It really was a cultural and social practice. It demonstrated the connection between pleasure and pain. Reading this book made me think about things that women (and men) do in our own culture for beauty... plastic surgery, body piercing and tattooing. Is it that we really aren't too far apart in these practices from the old practice of foot binding? I'm still not convinced.
One of Ping's major themes was that foot binding was a practice which connected women in the culture to each other.. mother with daughter, female relatives with each other, etc... a kind of sisterhood. As a mother of a daughter myself,I feel there should be some other way to connect with your daughter that doesn't involve mutilation or a crippling practice such as this. That being said, this was a very interesting, informative, albeit disturbing book about the history, social and cultural reasons for foot binding and definitely worth reading.
It seems that foot binding was done for more than just a symbol of beauty or erotic stimulation for men.It really was a cultural and social practice. It demonstrated the connection between pleasure and pain. Reading this book made me think about things that women (and men) do in our own culture for beauty... plastic surgery, body piercing and tattooing. Is it that we really aren't too far apart in these practices from the old practice of foot binding? I'm still not convinced.
One of Ping's major themes was that foot binding was a practice which connected women in the culture to each other.. mother with daughter, female relatives with each other, etc... a kind of sisterhood. As a mother of a daughter myself,I feel there should be some other way to connect with your daughter that doesn't involve mutilation or a crippling practice such as this. That being said, this was a very interesting, informative, albeit disturbing book about the history, social and cultural reasons for foot binding and definitely worth reading.
September 1, 2016
The factual information is interesting, when you can find it. I also liked the passages by other women describing their experiences.
However, I hated the parts when the author tried to interpret the bound foot - such as when she says it looks like both male and female genitalia - really? Also, the part when she talked about half-animal-half female forms in other mythologies such as the Sphinx or the mermaid and compared them with "hooved women" of China, was plain irritating. She seems to not realize that no woman was supposed to look like the Sphinx or the mermaid - whereas Chinese women were "forced" to have hooves.
Finally, I didn't know how violently the practice was stopped - women with bound feet were stopped on the streets or their homes were broken into, and their shoes and bandages were taken away. If you grow up with bound feet thinking this is how it is supposed to be and suffer for it, and all of a sudden everything you believed in is taken away - that must be incredibly painful psychologically, not to forget that walking without those shoes must be physically painful as hell.
I abandoned this book only because I got sick of reading her interpretations on bound feet and also several paragraphs seemed to not have any point.
However, I hated the parts when the author tried to interpret the bound foot - such as when she says it looks like both male and female genitalia - really? Also, the part when she talked about half-animal-half female forms in other mythologies such as the Sphinx or the mermaid and compared them with "hooved women" of China, was plain irritating. She seems to not realize that no woman was supposed to look like the Sphinx or the mermaid - whereas Chinese women were "forced" to have hooves.
Finally, I didn't know how violently the practice was stopped - women with bound feet were stopped on the streets or their homes were broken into, and their shoes and bandages were taken away. If you grow up with bound feet thinking this is how it is supposed to be and suffer for it, and all of a sudden everything you believed in is taken away - that must be incredibly painful psychologically, not to forget that walking without those shoes must be physically painful as hell.
I abandoned this book only because I got sick of reading her interpretations on bound feet and also several paragraphs seemed to not have any point.
February 19, 2016
This would have been a good deal drier if the author hadn't added in many references to older literature and anecdotes by a variety of women, which I heartily enjoyed. However toward the middle I felt as if the author was meandering when it came to the main thesis, as it were. There's a chapter entitled "Edible Beauty" - it basically outlined the hedonistic lifestyle of the emperor and the upper class in Hangzhou. If you read only that section out of the whole book, you would not have known Aching For Beauty was about footbinding.
Men are gross, no matter what country they're from. I think Wang's idea that women "bonded together" over this issue is true. However, it was more of a reaction to shared suffering rather than women becoming part of a "beauty culture".
Men are gross, no matter what country they're from. I think Wang's idea that women "bonded together" over this issue is true. However, it was more of a reaction to shared suffering rather than women becoming part of a "beauty culture".
February 6, 2009
This book was rather high-level philosophy, some parts becoming too much of a disertation comparing it's content to other chinese writers. But it had a lot of historical information and insights into the custom of footbinding. It spared no reality and some mental pictures will stay with me, wanted or not.
June 28, 2010
Ping's study is smart and interesting. After a few introductory chapters dealing with the culture of footbinding, she focuses primarily on its representations in classical Chinese literature. Some of the connections she makes, for example, the bound foot to the Lacanian phallus, speak to the work's origin as her dissertation, but overall her insights are well worth the time spent reading.
April 12, 2010
I couldn't quite bring myself to finish this book because it felt too much like a thesis, which in actuality, I believe it was. However, the topic was amazing and incredibly tense. It's piqued my interesting into learning more about footbinding, even though it's painful to read.
December 27, 2010
I only got through the first chapter before bringing it back to the library. Even still, I think the author summed up the book in that first chapter. I found "Snow Flower and The Secret Fan" more interesting.
January 31, 2013
A book that was left by my mother in my book shelves. This is really a heart-touching story of footbinding ever happened in China, where beauty in women was measured by the size of their feet. It is a real good book, and I recommend women with Chinese ancestors to read it.
February 29, 2008
A fascinating look into a unique, yet painful tradition. Recommended for anyone interested in Chinese history and culture.
May 7, 2008
This turned out to be a doctoral dissertation. I got through about half of it. She raises some interesting points, but this was too ponderous to be a good introduction to the topic.
June 2, 2008
If you want to be haunted with words for a long time, this is the book that will stay with you concerning the lengths humans go for acceptance. Ping's words are powerful.
June 5, 2008
After becoming obsessed with Geisha, I figured I would learn more about other Asian cultures and their traditions, such as the Chinese tradition of foot-binding. Very interesting.
January 25, 2012
I didn't know much about the practice of foot-binding; this is a well-researched history of foot-binding. I learned a lot, appreciated the pictures.
September 27, 2015
This I read for research for my latest book I am working on. I found the information insightful and very helpful.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews