A New Taipei City doctor, who is recognized as an authority on the traditional Chinese practice of foot binding, has a collection of more than 10,000 pairs of lotus shoes.
David Ko (柯基生), who works at Broad River Hospital in New Taipei City’s Tucheng District (土城), has been called a collector, an archeologist, an anthropologist and a sexologist.
Ko was first interested in the study of foot binding when he was 10 years old, which led to his study of medicine.
Photo: Huang Shao-kuo, Taipei Times
Ko said he is curious about what has been a taboo subject, adding that about 3 billion people had their feet bound before the practice ended in the 20th century.
Ko has traveled throughout Taiwan and China photographing and interviewing more than 300 elderly women who had their feet bound.
Ko’s collection is thought to be the largest and most comprehensive and has attracted the attention of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History, which has borrowed the collection and invited Ko to speak.
Ko has about 5,000 “golden lotus” slippers, which are 3 Chinese inches long (about 10cm), and was once considered the ideal foot length.
He has also collected more than 1,000 photographs of women and girls with bound feet.
Ko said he bought his first pair of lotus shoes for NT$640 at an antiques shop when he was 18.
Foot binding represents the widest-scale example of a cultural practice that involves modifying the female form in the pursuit of “aesthetic perfection,” Ko said, adding that the practice was widespread in China during the Northern Song Dynasty and continued for about 1,000 years.
Young girls who chose to have their feet bound did so not for male pleasure, but rather as a form of self restraint, Ko said, adding that the practice formed part of a system of ethics and self-cultivation.
Ko said some males also underwent the practice, adding that historians have connected the practice with male prostitution and to a social practice among some families to raise boys as girls.
Ko said he was surprised to discover that many of the shoes in his collection had belonged to males.
The practice was mostly popular among wealthy Han families, but spread to Manchurians during the Qing Dynasty, Ko said, adding that the expression “small feet are for ladies, large feet are for slaves” became popular in Qing society.
The Qing court officially forbade the practice among Manchurians, but were powerless to stop it, Ko said.
The practice continued in Taiwan even after it was seen as shameful in China, Ko said.
The Japanese colonial administration and civic organizations in the 1920s ended the practice in Taiwan, he said.
Many shoes in Ko’s collection were damaged by environmental conditions and rodents.
Ko said he began sealing the shoes in air-tight bags 10 years ago, adding that he controls the lighting, humidity and temperature in his storage room to preserve the collection.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching