TO ABOLISH FOOT-BINDING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVIII, Issue XVIII, 1 May 1897, Page 537

TO ABOLISH FOOT-BINDING.

A remarkable movement in China, which promises to have widespread results, is the anti-foot binding agitatation, recently started by a prominent member of the Chinese literati in Suifu, a great city of Szechuan. The leader of this movement is Chon, a literary graduate and a scholar of means and influence. His home is a leading city in the richest province of China. While district examinations were being held there recently every one was amazed at the appearance of large posters on all the dead walls containing an appeal to all educated Chinese to abandon the torture of their young daughters by footbinding. The proclamation was signed by Chon and a half-dozen other prominent graduates and officials. The proclamation was written in the regulation Chinese manner. He describes the tortures which young Chinese girls of the better class are forced to endure, and the misery and tears that are their portion for months and years. Even the worst convicts, he says, are never called upon to endure what a foolish custom imposes upon the tender frame of young girls, who are beloved by their fathers. He calls attention to the helplessness of such crippled women, and to their terrible fate when husbands and fathers are unable to defend or remove them from peril. He closes bv exhorting all educated Chinese to use their influence in abolishing a custom that is barbarous and opposed to the welfare of the nation. What makes the appeal more significant is that Chon appeals to all classes, for in the western part of Szechuan and in the neighbouring provinces the binding of the feet of female children is universal. Even the women who work in the fields have crippled feet and are forced to follow the harvesters on their hands and knees. In fact, the average length of the female foot in all the western part of this province is only three inches, yet no woman can expect to get a husband who does not comply with the custom, and have her feet deformed. It will be a striking tribute to the effect of missionary work in China should this abolition of foot binding spread throughout the empire.