Shaking Soul (Exploring China's Last Small Foot Tribe)

Author: Yang Yang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-07-01
Features: Who would have thought that there is a village on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau that has completely preserved living historical materials of foot-binding. Most things that enter history are unspoken words and objects, but the history provided by the cultural prose Shaking Souls by the Yunnan youth writer Yang Yang is vivid, hands-on, and directly narrated by those who experienced it firsthand. How can the value of this text be overestimated? We don’t need to rush to judge whether the perspectives Yang Yang brought when collecting and organizing these materials stand up to rigorous scrutiny, nor do we need to pick at the extent to which her uncontrollable emotional impulses in the writing dilute the simplicity of the facts. What Yang Yang has presented is already enough to excite us. In this book, she not only examines the formation history of Liuyi Village but also explores the environmental reasons behind women’s foot-binding, fully showcasing the rituals, tools, and processes of foot-binding. What is particularly precious is the psychology of the foot-binders and those who appreciated foot-binding. It cannot be denied that this psychology is private and even perverse. But if it is not revealed truthfully, then all past and present research on foot-binding will lose its weight. Women’s endurance of physical torment to identify with foot-binding is a distortion caused by a patriarchal society. In the chapter "Collecting Secret Verbs" in Shaking Souls, Yang Yang describes in detail the perverse tendencies of men, the special role played by "little feet," and the various stimuli they bring to men—truly, it is hard to believe. What is even more unbelievable is how this private, unhealthy obsession could transform into a socially widespread "aesthetic" activity. Such a transformation reminds us of the importance of social mental health and the difficulty of protecting it. The numerous pictures and stories in the book are truly shocking. These elderly foot-binders are not living for future generations to provide academic materials; they are ordinary people who have made it to this day. Their dance is a dance of life, their movement is a tremor of the soul. Although they cannot change the history of foot-binding from a physical perspective, they can still achieve freedom in spirit. Witnessing the passing of an unhealthy custom once obsessively pursued by a nation, and examining the cultural symbols intertwined with traces of daily life, readers will also, like the author of Shaking Souls, reflect on the changes of the times and the expansion of human nature.