Title: Snow Flower and the Secret FanAuthor: Lisa See
Rating: *****
This author was recommended to me by two friends -- sisters and avid readers. It seems they actually liked another of the author's books even better, but this is the one I happened to pick up first.
The story itself is intriguing and entertaining indeed, as well as terribly tragic and sad. But I found the back story about the ancient Chinese practice of foot-binding to be fascinating. The story was told from the viewpoint of Chinese women who embraced the concept that their beauty and desireability to a man depended on the successful creation of "golden lilies" feet. The process was described in painful detail.
"As the eldest,I went first, and I was determined to show how brave I could be. Mama washed my feet and rubbed them with alum, to contract the tissue and limit the inevitable secretions of blood and pus. She cut my toenails as short as possible. During this time, my bandages were soaked so that when they dried on my skin, they would tighten even more. Next, Mama took one end of a bandage, placed it on my instep,then pulled it over my four smallest toes to begin the process of rolling them underneath my foot. From here she wrapped the bandage back around my heel. Another loop around the ankle helped to seure and stabilize the first two loops. The idea was to get my toes and heel to meet, creating the cleft, but leaving my big toe to walk on. Mama repeated these steps until the entire bandage was used. Aunt and Grandmother looked over her shoulder the entire time, making sure no wrinkles saw their way into those loops. Finally, Mama sewed the end tightly shut so the bindings would not loosen and I would not be able to work my foot free . . . by now growing daggers of pain were shooting from our feet up our legs."
This takes place when a girl is just six or seven years old. Bones are broken repeatedly and the bindings are adjusted to create the perfect lilies. The story goes on to describe life for the cultured Chinese women, doing embroidery confined most of the time to an upper room, having a husband selected for them, with very limited walking as a result of the foot deformities--and the sometimes tragic results of this practice. Apparently, Chinese men found especially erotic the cleft in the foot formed by the toes being bent back to meet the heel.
Lisa See weaves an entrancing story, beautifully written, with wonderful characters and scenes from Chinese history. Her book is well researched and is said to be quite accurate historically, though the characters themselves are fictional.
Just after I read this book, someone forwarded pictures to me that could very well have been the main character in the book in her later years. I don't know where the pictures are from or who to credit for them, but they speak for themselves.
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