by Jen Soong

My great-grandmother’s feet were no bigger than a sliver of cake. Beginning in the late 13^th century in China, the practice of foot binding twisted women’s feet into dainty, doll sizes. To prevent a girl’s foot from growing naturally, her bones were broken, then wrapped tightly to slip into tiny, embroidered lotus shoes.

Legend has it that a beguiling dancer named Yao Niang bound her feet into the shape of a new moon to enchant Emperor Li Yu with her elegant dancing on her toes. Court ladies then took up the excruciatingly painful practice. Delicate feet became a coveted status symbol, embodying wealth and virginity.

In a photograph, my maternal great-grandmother wears a silk black jacket with red knotted buttons, matching her shoes. I try to decipher her dark eyes, plum-dumpling cheeks and diminutive feet. She looks like a red-crowned crane with clipped wings. She could never escape, never fly.

We never met and even if we did, I can’t speak her language fluently. Still, I want to ask her: Was it her mother who broke her bones, who wiped away her tears? Or, was it someone else who doused her with liquor and muffled her screams with a dirty ivory handkerchief?

If we met in the afterlife, I would clutch her hand gently and whisper in her ear: Feet are not meant to be broken. Girls are not meant to be trapped. Girls, like dancing cranes, are meant to fly.