To what end? From bound feet
to world traveler in 50 years
By Jian Ping

May is the Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The occasion compels me to look at the
women in my family—my Grandma Nainai with bound feet, my mother, a devoted
Communist, me, a first-generation Chinese immigrant in the United States, and my daughter,
a world traveler—I realize that the changes in our lives reflect in many ways the progress
women have made in the last century, despite all the challenges that women still face today.  

Nainai came from a peasant family in Shandong Province, home of Confucius where
traditions ran deep and generations of family lived under the same roofs. Her feet were
bound, as was the custom at the time, and she never received any education. Her crippled
feet made it painful for her to walk but didn’t spare her from working in the field, cooking for
the household, and caring for the domestic animals. She married young, in an arranged
matchmaking that didn’t involve her wishes, and she was called Hou Tian Shi, with Hou as
her husband’s family name, and Tian, her father’s family name, and “Shi” a prefix for a
married woman. She didn’t have a name of her own; it was as if, to society, she and millions
like her, were not really “there.”
 
Jian Ping
Traditionally, virtuous women had to follow the rule of the “three obeys:” obey their fathers
when they are young, obey their husbands when they are married, and obey their sons when
they are widowed. Nainai, a very loving person, subjected herself to each of these rules.

Although mentally strong and capable of dealing with all the hardships in life, Nainai lived for
others. She never experienced or probably even understood the concept of “self.”  Today,
though, I sometimes wonder, as I look at the excesses of consumption in American and
Chinese cities and the rows of “Self Help” books in stores, whether we have reached the
other end of the spectrum, where everything is self-serving, wrapped in shiny paper.  

I was raised by Nainai while my parents devoted most of their waking hours to work. Each
morning I watched Nainai bind her feet with a long cloth strip so as to get enough support for
her to move around, and each evening, I stood by as she unbound the strip and soaked her
feet in warm water to get rid of the rotten smell and regain her blood circulation.  As I grew
older, and the world became larger, I regarded her a victim of the feudal society.  Yet, I wince
a little when I see an avowedly strong, independent, professional woman purposely striding
along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile trying to maintain her balance in staggering 4-inch high
heels. How far, exactly, have we come?
 Jian Ping is author of “Mulberry Child: A Memoir of
China. “ For more information, visit
www.moraquest.
com or www.mulberrychild.com. Jian Ping’s blog,
which she keeps with a couple of other authors, is at
www.smearedtype.com.
Nainai lived for others.
Compared to my grandmother, my mother was luckier. Born into a poor peasant’s family in
a mountain village near the Russian border in 1928, she avoided the fate of foot binding.
Thanks to her strong-willed mother, my mother didn’t become a concubine to a local
landlord and narrowly escaped death under the Japanese occupation. At 20, she joined
the Communist Party, and out of gratitude, dedicated her life to the cause of revolution. She
started school after she became a mother and obtained her college degree when she had
five children at her decidedly sensible heels. She prevailed and became a top school
administrator. As such, she was always strict with us children and requested that we be
Chairman Mao’s good children. Even the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) that turned the
country into chaos and rendered her and my father targets of persecution didn’t change her
devotion to the Party. She was paraded on the streets, coerced to divorce my father, and
our family was driven out of our home to a mud hut without water and heating. But none of
these could change her commitment. She believed that the Communist Party lost control
and trusted that it would correct all the wrongs done to her, her family, and her comrades.

She never wavered. Today, at 83, she still maintains the same beliefs.

Growing up during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and suffering through the ordeals
with my parents, I found myself hard pressed to believe in any “ism.” I hid behind closed
My mother dedicated her life to
the cause of revolution.
doors and studied English secretly. When the reforms restored college
education in 1978, I passed the college entrance examination and chose
English as my major.

Mao claimed “women are half of the sky” in the new China, but my first
assigned job after college proved that it was not the case.   

“We requested a male student,” a human resource manager, ironically a
woman, said coldly to me. “How can we let a young, single woman handle the
film import and export business that involves traveling abroad and dealing with
foreigners?”

I had no choice but to accept banishment to a factory to “best” serve the
country—working on film subtitle translations. The environment was
suffocating, compelling me to seek a better life. After four years of setbacks, I
succeeded in escaping to the United States to pursue graduate studies. I was
Lisa (r) and me
is smart and eloquent, with a bachelor’s degree in
journalism. She works at a public relations firm
where 90% of the employees are women. She works
hard but appreciates a societal respect and freedom
that her great grandmother couldn’t even imagine.
She spends many long weekends and vacation days
traveling where she pleases around the globe. A far,
far cry from her great-grandmother’s small village
worldview and bound feet.

What incredible bridges we have crossed in these
four generations of women! And yet, sometimes,
when I see Lisa eyeing another pair of long-heeled
shoes at Nordstrom, when I think too long about the
loss of the multi-generational family support
structure that formed the cornerstone of my
grandmother’s world, well, I wonder just where
those bridges actually lead.
lucky to get away in 1986 when China just opened its door to the outside world.  Yet freedom in the modern world, with all its
blessings, has led to disbursing the traditional cross-generational home.  I missed my large family in China.
With my daughter, Lisa, things couldn’t be more different from the previous three generations—I think.  She grew up in the
United States and learned to think independently and question authority without fear when she was a child. She is a free
spirit. At 25, she has traveled to more than 35 countries in the world and fluently speaks English, Chinese, and French. She
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