Bound Feet

"Wives of merchants usually had bound feet and led bound lives."

By Judy Yung

Chinese American women in the U.S. frequently had to fight both the prejudices of the outside world and restrictive traditions within their own home. In Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco Historian Judy Yung describes the effects of traditional ways on her own Great-Grandmother Leong Shee who came to the United States in 1893. Her husband, Chong [Chin] Lung had merchant status because he owned a share of the Sing Kee Company. He also farmed in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

While Chin Lung continued to farm in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, Great-Grandmother chose to live above the Sing Kee store at 808 Sacramento Street, where she gave birth to five children in quick succession. …Unable to go out because of her bound feet, Chinese beliefs that women should not be seen in public, and perhaps fear for her own safety, she led a cloistered but busy life. Being frugal, she took in sewing to make extra money. As she told my mother many years later, "Ying, when you go to America, don't be lazy. Work hard and you will become rich. Your grandfather grew potatoes, and although I was busy at home, I sewed on a foot-treadle machine, made buttons, and weaved loose threads [did finishing work].

Great-Grandmother's secluded and hard-working life in San Francisco Chinatown was typical for Chinese women in the second half of the nineteenth century. Wives of merchants, who were at the top of the social hierarchy in Chinatown, usually had bound feet and led bound lives. But even women of the laboring class-without bound feet-found themselves confined to the domestic sphere within Chinatown. Prostitutes, who were at the bottom of the social order, had the least freedom and opportunity to change their lives. Whereas most European women found immigration to America a liberating experience, Chinese women, except in certain situations, found it inhibiting.

From Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco by Judy Yung. The Regents of the University of Califronia, 1995, 15-16.

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