You're a little Chinese girl in ancient times. You're very excited because today is your birthday! You're turning three. Your parents are very rich and you are of noble blood and class. After receiving a beautiful doll and a few other toys, your parents lead someone else into the room. He is tall and thin, with a long beard. You smile and laugh at him, and he picks you up.

He grabs your foot and bends your tiny toes under your foot. It hurts! You scream and try to get away, but he holds you tight. You cry and scream until your voice is sore! Oh, how it hurts! Your toes are dangling the wrong way, and you hear a sharp crack. Your mother gives a muffled cry and someone carries her out of the room.

Oh, you hate this man with the long beard! He takes out a long wet cloth, like the servants use when washing dishes, and wraps it tightly around your aching foot, your broken toes still bent under your foot. Then he does the same process to your other foot. It's horrible, awful, dreadful! You wail and wail but the man has no mercy. Then he sets you down on the couch and leaves you crying there.

As the horrid cloth dries over your foot, it tightens. It feels like the blood is squishing out of your foot. You can't stand up at all. Your father looks at you with pity, and says something mysterious when he leaves the room.

"She'll thank us later."

After the cloth is fully dried, your father comes and takes it off. Your toes are blue and bent, and your foot stiff. The next night, the horrid man with the long beard comes again. He wraps the cloth over your foot again, and the same things happen as before. This torture goes on and on for a very long time. You lose track.

You're four now, then five. Your feet are in such constant agony that servants must carry you everywhere. Something disgusting is happening to your broken toes. They're slowly falling off. By the time you're eight, you have no toes, and your feet are the same size as they were when you were three.

Eight years later, you're thanking your parents endlessly for this. Now you're able to marry a man of your social class. No one would ever marry someone with big feet!And yours are the size of a 3-year-old's! But your feet often ache (not as much anymore) and you still can't walk. You'll never walk again. If you did, your ankles might break. Servants carry you. And when you have a little girl, you put her through the same torture that you went through yourself.

Sadly, this was a very common practice in ancient China. Big feet were considered ugly. This story is historical fiction, which means this exact thing didn't happen, but foot binding did. Being carried everywhere was a mark of nobility because only the richest had servants to do that.

I hope you enjoyed this walk in someone else's tiny shoes.


Editor's Note: Wow. After reading your article, I investigated to confirm that the little girl's toes falling was in fact a little imaginative license on your part -- but it's not. I never knew that in ancient China, three inches was considered the "ideal" length of a woman's foot. That's horrible! Thank goodness it was outlawed, even if it was barely 50 years ago in 1949.