Customer Reviews

Aching For Beauty: Footbinding in China

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Even though the topic is a fascinating one. I struggled to complete this book. The author has a PhD in Comparative Literature and according to the book jacket, teaches creative writing course.

I'm not sure how such an interesting topic could be written in such a dry manner, especially by someone who teaches "creative" writing. This book actually reads more like a doctoral thesis than a book for the mainstream audience. The author has written about the history of footbinding, eroticism and violence in China and how these are all entwined. The too-technical, overly-referenced, dense, academic writing style of the author has not done these topics justice.

I am sure there is plenty of intellectual meat in this book, but I wanted to know more about the phenomenon and experience of footbinding, and this is more like a literary and sociopolitical analysis... Just not what I was looking for I guess...

Aching for Beauty is an extensive history of the tradition of footbinding in China. Women were defined by the size of one's feet, a sign of beauty.Wang Ping describes the sexual connotations related to footbinding. I think the book is good,but the contents contains a lot of history and research in order to comprehend the author's intent. The book is more interesting in the second half when Wang Ping desribes female bonding called Tan Chi where women share writing, poetry,and verbal stories. This book would be a great reference in regards to footbinding and Chinese tradition through centuries. It is not an easy read.

The book reads much more like a very long psycho-analytical English essay that relies on a lot of assumptions to comment on foot binding than actual historical details and analysis of foot binding. If you're trying to find a book that will educate you about the concrete whys and hows of foot binding you won't really find that here. If on the other hand you're interested in how Chinese literature sheds light on the supposed psyche and mores of Chinese men and women as it relates to foot binding you might enjoy it more. As a side note I think some of the analysis in the book was farfetched and filler material for a thesis.

After enjoying Ping's poetry, I started reading this book. It is wonderfully well-researched. The photos are stunning in their ability to portray the mutilation of the feet. Most interesting is her ability to research this practice from several different views. I was very interested in the arts that promote this practice, as well as how historically it was often difficult to prevent women from continuing the tradition. This book was informative without lapsing into too many stats or technical theories.

Wang Ping evaluates the footbinding custom in China through a cross-culture and interdisciplinary perspective, and this historical approach makes the book more interesting than other books that talk about the same topic. Strongly recommended!!

First off, I want to address what most of the reviews for this book complain about: that this book is dry and hard to read. It's seen as that because it's not here to "exoticize" the practice of footbinding, but to inform about the practice and put out facts and link this practice to wider historical and societal significance. For those looking for something that will "paint you a picture" of what it was like to have your foot bound, create an "atmosphere" of the culture and customs of foot-binding, etc...please look towards other books and also in the fiction section, because you will not find it in this informative and heavily-researched academic study. This book does not exist to satiate one's questionable interest in wanting to fantasize about the conditions and aesthetics that foot-binding involved. It is here to understand how it came about, why it existed and persisted for so long, how it affected and still affects Chinese culture and women (and women worldwide) to this day, and how people can apply this knowledge to learn something of human nature and an old, complicated, diverse culture.

I had initially bought this book to share with my mother as I wanted to get her reading more, and thought a book related to Chinese history that didn't seem too much like a textbook would help, but I have to warn those with more conservative parents like mine that this book contains excerpts from ancient erotic poems/stories that are quite graphic (even compared to today's standards). This is how I ended up reading and keeping the book for myself.

Yes, for those not used to academic language and writing styles (i.e. "dissertation language"), it can seem pedantic and dry. But if you can get through it, you will learn so much about foot-binding that the Wikipedia entry doesn't even begin to touch. There are actual first-person accounts of foot-binding, including some experiences from some of the last women to have their feet bound. It's actually really hard to remember every single interesting, not-widely-known fact or connection about foot-binding because there is so much scattered throughout the book.

My only main complaint with the book is that there doesn't seem to be much of an order. The book is grouped in various "chapters", but the author jumps from time-frame to time-frame, has a very "stream of consciousness" way of skipping from topic to topic, and tends to ramble on a bit about things that you're not sure is relevant to the topic at hand. But if you have the patience and time, you can learn a lot, and that can be a great jumping-off point to searching for other sources on the subject and maybe even expand into other aspects of Chinese culture both ancient and modern.

This is a very difficult book to read as it deals with a lot of what would now be considered horrendous treatment of the female body. In it's own way, it's a form of torture but it also gives insight to the treatment of women in old China. Read it more than once as the first time is hard to read without crying (at least that's how it worked out for me)