Talk:Foot binding

Baseless statistic in the introduction

An internet [1] mentioned today that the following statistic in the introduction is unfounded:

It has been estimated that by the 19th century, 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, rising to almost 100% in upper-class Chinese women.

Indeed, the source (an NPR article) claims it based only on a book about foot fetishism. Do there exist references that confirm the statistic? Moreover, the source claims that "[s]ome estimate that as many as 2 billion Chinese women broke and bound their feet to attain this agonizing ideal of physical perfection" without giving any reference or at least a time period over which this value has been aggregated. It may be better to ignore the source for this Wikipedia article.Leonry (talk) 10:59, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

After some research on the author and the book, it seems that this is a general reference for foot and shoe fetishism. The author comes from the shoe industry, I didn't find any academic sound work. The claim may be altered to

William A. Rossi estimates that by the 19th century, 40–50% of all Chinese women may have had bound feet, rising to almost 100% in upper-class Chinese women.

with the reference to the NPR article as a source if the original source (i.e. the book) cannot be used.Leonry (talk) 11:29, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

I understand where you are coming from now. Estimate of 50%, with an error of +/-50%, so the real figure lies between 0% to 100%. 2A00:23C5:C13C:9F01:282B:B9FA:2092:6AA6 (talk) 21:50, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

You can indeed make it clearer as to who said it, but it is sourced, so it should not be removed without good reason. We are not using the 2 billion claim (it is just a claim by some), so that is irrelevant. Hzh (talk) 11:35, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

A note also that the percentage estimates given are not unusual, in fact among women surveyed in many parts of China, the number of women who had their feet bound at some stage were 100% in the late 19th and early 20th century - [2]. Hzh (talk) 12:39, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

Where? 2A00:23C5:C13C:9F01:282B:B9FA:2092:6AA6 (talk) 21:45, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Oh, OK. I guess I got triggered by the allegation of sinophobia that the internet claimed, so I made a fool of myself. I will stick to my topics better. Leonry (talk) 12:47, 29 January 2021 (UTC)

What a load of rubbish. These figures were made up. No one actually did a count. The real proportion was less than 5%, and probably less than 1%. Given 90% and more of the Chinese lived in poverty, their daughters were not foot-bound. 2A00:23C5:C13C:9F01:282B:B9FA:2092:6AA6 (talk) 21:19, 26 May 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: HIST 4048 Women and Gender in Modern China

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 5 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Freehilh (article contribs).

Wiki Education assignment: HIST 4048 Women and Gender in Modern China

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 17 January 2023 and 16 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Grace.liubey (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Allendq (talk) 17:31, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Harbin shoemaker was not necessarily the last "littleshoes" factory to close

This Harbin shoemaker kept her factory open not for profit but because she was committed to "keeping every last of these elderly ladies well-shod, so they can still get around as they will". Basically it was a contribution to her local community. When she got to retire her production line in Harbin, there were still lots of elderly women with bound feet outside Manchuria, but factories there were closing off nonetheless as it became less and less profitable. I've not yet found a reliable source as to if Harbin Zhiqiang was really the last one. It'd be sad if true. Even today there's inflicted elderly ladies who's only in their 70's, if you think about it.

I'm removing this sentence for now because her mission completion marked only the disappearance of this abhorrent tradition in Manchuria, and bears a sense of false optimism that would potentially make one ignore other elderly ladies' unmet needs, if there's still any. Arachnikhan (talk) 20:59, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

You should not remove the sentence until you cam provide an alternative source. Hzh (talk) 21:49, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the instruction. The ref was a popular book that only mentioned Harbin shoemaker anecdotally to ease into the main theme. I probably should have marked it with a flag like [dubious] first? Although my reason for deleting mainly was it was placed at the very end of "decline" section presumably as a closure, but it was actually anachronistic with the previous sentence.

This preceding sentence sounds pretty questionable too. The sources quoted here are two blog posts that refers to the same photographer's recent(2015) published photos & interviews of "the very last victims of foot binding after nine years of searching and travelling across China". It doesn't appear the editor who added it intended to promote anything here, but I don't think this description can be taken literally.

On a side note, is "Heavenly Foot Society" a legit translation used by people back then? There's a separate article under this exact name but was translated from Swedish. I'm thinking if there wasn't a well-established English term already maybe we should use "Natural Foot Society"? .. "heavenly foot" sounds suspiciously like what contemporary dudes would want the most given the history development.. oooor, maybe if unless "heaven" underwent similar change like "gay" did and people really did call it that back then.. in which case Heaven Eden Tengri pardon my degeneracy Arachnikhan (talk) 13:25, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

The book is written by an academic and a social historian, and she likely knows more than you do. So far you haven't offered anything apart from personal opinion, and Wikipedia article has no place for personal opinion. The Guardian or Slate article are not blogs, they simply gave something from a recently published book. "Heavenly" is a direct translation of "tian", more recent publication prefers "natural", which is more explanatory. Either is fine, I have no objection to anyone changing it. Hzh (talk) 14:10, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

Citation Misuse of the NPR 2007 article

The claims which use this citation: the "40-50%" figure nor any other figure is ever mentioned; the talk about a handful of elderly with bound feet in 2007 - the only relevant claim is that there used to be 300 people with bound feet in one particular village; and no mention of rice fields. Gross misuse of the NPR article and I have removed all statements that cite this article. Will need a source that actually corroborates the statements, rather than having nothing to do with them.

On a side note, there seems to be many claims without citations, but that's another issue. Song12301 (talk) 19:27, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

From that NPR source: "According to the American author William Rossi, who wrote The Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe, 40 percent to 50 percent of Chinese women had bound feet in the 19th century. For the upper classes, the figure was almost 100 percent." – notwally (talk) 19:44, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

The problem arose because the website originally had two articles there, one with the 40-50% quote, one without. It seems that one was removed later (but it was still in the archived page). I've fixed the link. Hzh (talk) 20:27, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Sourced content

@Mangopapayafruit Please don't remove sourced content in article. The source is an encyclopedia, unless you have evidence to counter it, it is not for you to judge the validity of the information within it, nor does an encyclopedia require it to give further sources. So either leave it alone or provide sources that say otherwise. You can find other sources that say similar things like here (page 97) citing the book on footbinding by Levy. Hzh (talk) 09:03, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Just because Victoria Pitts-Taylor called her book an encyclopedia does not mean that it has all the academic rigor of other encyclopedias. Wikipedia guidelines say, "Exceptional claims require exceptional sourcing". The claim that the Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty encouraged footbinding is an exceptional claim, therefore it needs an exceptional source. Howard S. Levy said that the Han Chinese during the Yuan dynasty might had encouraged footbinding to distinguish Chinese women from foreign women. It was after this when he said "Perhaps the Mongols encourage it....". Keyword "perhaps", meaning that this claim is speculative in Levy's book. When this claim got put onto wikipedia, it was reported as if it is a rigorously attested fact. Mangopapayafruit (talk) 16:30, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

Don't make claim about WP guidelines you don't understand. If the claim is exceptional, you should be able to easily find sources that can counter it, and you haven't produced one despite me asking you for it multiple times. It's not as if this is something widely discussed. The worst you can say is that that source mis-stated an opinion as a fact, or an unresolved issue as established consensus. And if it did, then a simple adjustment to the text should be sufficient. As it is, I have already adjusted the text to something that is not disputed (and adding a source for that). In the meantime, I will look for other sources that have discussed the issue to see what the general opinion on this is. Hzh (talk) 20:01, 2 April 2025 (UTC)