by May Q. Wong
She stopped speaking when the other foot was freed and submerged it eagerly.
“How horrible! It must have been so painful!” cried Ah Thloo, starting to get up to regain circulation in her haunches. Her grandmother laid a hand gently on her shoulder to restrain her.
“Yes, very painful. If you want to know how it felt at the beginning, try not to move at all, even when your legs start to hurt.”
Ah Thloo lowered herself down and settled back to learn more, trying to ignore the tingling of pins and needles in her legs.
“I don’t remember when the bindings started to force the front of my feet down to meet my heel. I learned how to care for them. Eventually, my feet needed the bindings to feel supported. The whole process must have taken about ten years. At least, that’s when the pain started to dull. My feet stopped growing when I turned fifteen or so. In all that time, I don’t remember ever sleeping through the night.”
Hiccupping from her crying, Ah Thloo asked, “Ah Ngange, hu-uck, who did, hu-uck, this terrible thing to you?” She thought surely it must have been evil people who had forced such cruelty upon her beloved Ah Ngange. Hadn’t she heard that bandits did unspeakable things to girls? “Didn’t, hu-uck, your mother try, hu-uck, to stop them?” She was feeling shooting pains in her legs now and her back was throbbing, but she did not get up.
“It was my grandmother and my mother, of course.”
Ah Thloo’s eyes opened wide with disbelief, but she knew that her grandmother was telling the truth. “But it’s so unfair!”
“Yes, unfair and unjust, because only girls suffer like this. It was tradition. Their own feet had been bound. Some traditions are good, some aren’t. Unfortunately, we can’t always tell the difference until it’s too late. They believed this would help me find a good husband. I don’t blame them. In one thing they were right—I was content with my life and marriage.”
Then she whispered into her granddaughter’s ear, “But I don’t think the size of my feet made any difference! Times are changing and none of you girls will live with this tradition! When you’re older, you’ll understand that justice is worth fighting for. Get up now. Slowly . . . hold on to my hand. There you are.” Her grandmother’s strong hands gripped Ah Thloo’s small ones. “How do you feel?”
“Thank you, Ah Ngange,” murmured Ah Thloo, tears welling up again. “It feels like ngai, ants, are crawling up and down, pinching and biting!” Placing her weight on one foot, she cried out, “Aiyahh ! How could you bear this for so long?”
“Wipe away those tears.” Instead of answering, Ah Ngange reached over to massage Ah Thloo’s legs and feet firmly. “This’ll help you get back to normal. Do it this way. I need your help now. My bones are tired and I can’t reach my toes. I’ll show you what to do. My feet no longer like to be as free as a child’s. We must work quickly to dry them, bind them up, and put them to bed.”
Every night, until her grandmother died, Ah Thloo lovingly tended to the older woman’s feet. While they were together, her grandmother talked about her own life, teaching Ah Thloo the womanly arts and much more. As she learned more about her grandmother, she learned about herself. Later, Ah Thloo would say, “Ah Ngange taught me how to survive, how to keep going. I learned that even people who love you will hurt you. She taught me about forgiveness. I am still learning.”
• • •
AH THLOO: CHINA, 1925–1929
Girls were very rarely educated in the Guangdong countryside, but their move out of their family homes and into the nui oak was a type of finishing school. There, they learned about what the next part of their lives would be like, as wives and mothers.
The nui oak, similar to a bunkhouse, was mainly a place for the village’s single girls to sleep at night. A building, perhaps an empty house left by a dead widow, was designated for this purpose. In large villages, each neighbourhood might have several such buildings, varying in size and capacity. It was traditional, in families with boys and girls, to separate them when they reached a certain age, usually when the girls started their menstrual periods. During the day, the girls returned home to perform their chores, work in the fields, and eat with their families.
They might be chaperoned by a local widow, who shared her knowledge, wisdom, and old wives’ tales with the group; occasionally, an older, unmarried woman would move into the house permanently, to relieve the burden on her parents. An unmarried woman was a continuing encumbrance; at best, an embarrassment and at worst, a curse on the family. It was unlucky to include her as part of the family’s ancestral tablets because it was believed that when an unmarried daughter died, she produced an inauspicious ghost. Women who had been abandoned by their husbands, or were widowed, might return to the nui oak to escape their in-laws, although this was rare.
At the nui oak, the girls had their own bed linens and kept their personal belongings in a semi-private space. But like girls everywhere and at any age, friends shared and borrowed things. They shared beds too; they had to, as there were never enough, not even in their own homes.
Their evenings and nights were spent in the company of females, and here they completed their education about womanhood. From traditional songs, they learned about the realities of marriage, how to cope with a difficult mother-in-law (all mothers-in-law were expected to be difficult), and how to be a “good wife”: a good wife made sure her husband was fed, looked after his parents as if they were her own, produced sons, and worked hard. They memorized bridal laments and funeral dirges and learned how to mourn, thus enabling them to carry on two of the most important social customs in China.
While they sang, their hands kept busy, with embroidering, sewing, or weaving. They shared designs and techniques to make practical items for their dowries, such as slippers, quilts, or baskets. If they were lucky, they might sell their extras at the market town, earning some cash.
There were six to eight girls living in Ah Thloo’s nui oak. One of her day moy, sister friends, was Ah Kange. They had different personalities: whereas Ah Thloo was quiet and contemplative, Ah Kange was boisterous; while Ah Thloo was diligent in her work, her friend loved to play. But they became inseparable.
Ah Kange’s father was a rich merchant and landowner who often travelled to the cosmopolitan city of Guangzhou, and his contact with business people and foreigners exposed him to new ideas, one of which was to educate his daughter. However, he progressed prudently. Rather than send the girl to the village school where she would be in the company of boys, he hired a tutor to teach her reading, writing, and arithmetic at home, where his wife could chaperone. With enough servants to do the field and house work, Ah Kange went home each day to memorize written characters and learn arithmetic. She applied her knowledge of numbers to enhance her gambling winnings in games of chance during Gwoh Nien, the New Year festival, when itinerant peddlers, performers, jugglers, and hawkers set up business in the village.
Ah Kange brought a game of Mah Jong to the nui oak. Played with small oblong tiles, it has symbols depicting various suits (circles, bamboos, numbers, the four winds, flowers, and dragons). It is similar to the card game of gin rummy. Scoring is based on the combination of suits with winds, flowers, and dragons, and the winner is the first to collect a series of matching groupings using all her tiles. The game is played vigorously and quickly; the click-clacking and slapping of tiles adds to the excitement and fun. A quick eye and a good memory enhance strategy and the chances of winning.
Ah Kange loved to play, and her animated and good-natured vocalizations were infectious. When her time came to marry, she knew her parents would buy her trousseau items so she didn’t need to make them. While some girls worked with their hands, she could always persuade three of them to spend their evenings playing with her. Most of the girls did not have cash to gamble with so they played with peanuts, an inexpensive and readily available snack.
Ah Thloo, although interested in watching the strategy from the sidelines, rarely played. Always frugal, she preferred to keep bus
y with her hands. Ah Kange, who won often, was generous with gifts of food or sewing supplies to Ah Thloo. At New Year’s, Ah Kange insisted that Ah Thloo try her luck, and gave her cash with which to gamble. Ah Thloo found she actually enjoyed playing, but never got carried away and saved most of her winnings.
• • •
When Ah Thloo first moved into the one-room nui oak, the older girls were trading old wives’ tales about men and women, and Ah Thloo heard more stories about “golden lilies.” Getting ready for bed, they took turns washing their faces, hands, and feet in a communal basin on a corner stand. As each girl completed her cleaning routine, she emptied her dirty water into a collecting trough outside, so the next user could fill the bowl with fresh, cold water from a pitcher below the stand. There was a communal chamber pot on the floor behind a roughly woven cotton curtain. The contents of that pot were also emptied into the trough, and the mixture was collected each morning to fertilize the fields.
As usual, Ah Thloo was the last to come in, after helping Ah Ngange. Being a newcomer, she kept mostly to herself. She was often teased—it was the girls’ way of getting the measure of a person. There were few secrets in a house of females. While some had grandmothers and mothers with bound feet, all the girls were unimpaired and none had seen an unbound foot. Ignorance made them variously curious, disgusted, and envious about Ah Thloo’s secret knowledge.
“Well, the youngster has come in at last,” said Pure Light. “I can smell her.” At seventeen, the oldest girl in the nui oak, she was in danger of becoming an old maid. Her family, though fairly well off and anxious to have her wed, had yet to find her a willing husband. Unlike her name, she had a dark complexion with a personality to match. As the longest resident, she was the only girl who did not share a bed.
Ah Thloo still smelled of Ah Ngange’s medicinal herbs. The allusion to her grandmother’s bound feet was not lost on her, but she stayed quiet and commenced her own ablutions.
“I’ve heard that women with golden lilies do depraved things with men,” taunted Pure Light. “I’ve heard that binding the feet produces muscles that normal, proper girls don’t have—muscles that fuck!” The coarse word produced raucous laughter among most of the girls. Only Ah Kange remained solemn. She stayed seated but was poised to help her friend.
Ah Thloo couldn’t ignore the remark; the spiteful words were dishonouring Ah Ngange. She hurled the bowl of water in which she had just cleaned her feet at the older girl, shouting, “Shut your ignorant mouth, you ugly old maid! If you, or anyone else, says anything disrespectful about my grandmother again, I’ll pour the contents of the chamber pot on all your belongings,” and she pointedly looked each girl in the eye. “And you’ll never know when I’ll do it.” She braced her feet on the bare floor, preparing for a fight. Her face burned red, her eyes were hard slits, shooting daggers of defiance. She stared at Pure Light.
Pure Light sputtered and cringed from the cold, dirty water but didn’t get up from her wet bed. For once she was speechless. No one laughed at her expense. A few of the girls stole furtive glances at one another, then at Ah Thloo. Their lips twitched at the corners, but no one spoke again that night. Ah Kange smiled at her friend.
• • •
In the nui oak, Ah Thloo also learned some radical and unusual ideas. One evening, Ah Kange held up a pamphlet that she had surreptitiously taken from under a pile of new books her tutor had brought. It was from the Kuomintang, a political party. The words nui ngange, female person, on the cover had caught her attention.
While Ah Kange read the dull, political contents out loud in an increasingly impatient and bored manner, Ah Thloo was astonished to hear such radically new concepts as equality between the sexes, a woman’s right to inherit property, and protection for women who escaped from oppressive marriages. The pamphlet was probably a set of resolutions regarding women’s rights put forward by the KMT Party’s Central Women’s Department. Written in formal language, the pamphlet’s words were difficult for the girls to understand. Their lives up to that time had focused on hard physical labour just to survive; the concepts were confusing. What did “equality” mean? How could women “inherit” property when everyone knew everything belonged to the man’s family?
They speculated about the meaning of “oppressive marriage.” One of the girls reminded them of the night her mother had lost an eye. Her father had poked it out with his chopstick, blaming her for their poverty; he was enraged at having to eat watery rice and mung beans for six months. That night, and for some time afterwards, the girl had returned home to sleep with her mother.
Escaping bad marriages sounded like a good idea, but how would it actually work? Where would women go? How would they feed themselves and their children if they had no land to work, tools to use, or houses to live in? The girl’s mother certainly had nowhere to go.
When the girl first told the story, Ah Thloo had been incredulous. Her own family members were civil toward one another and she had not been exposed to that type of cruelty. She wasn’t sure how she would react if her future husband were to beat her. Working on the land had made her physically strong. Would she hit back? While Ah Thloo did not fully understand the concepts they gossiped about as teenagers in the nui oak, she never forgot them.
A woman’s duty is not to control or take charge. Instead she must follow the “three submissions.” When she is young, she must submit to her parents. After her marriage, she must submit to her husband. When she is widowed, she must submit to her son. These are the rules of propriety.
—Barbara N. Ramusak and Sharon Sievers, Women in East Asia
FIVE
Maange Foon—Blind Marriage
AH THLOO: JANUARY 1929
“Father is back from the photographer’s shop,” Ah Thoo’s mother said. “Hurry, pour him a cup of tea and make him comfortable while we look at the family portrait.”
Ah Thloo had had her first photograph taken a few days before; her father was returning from the market town with a copy of it. She had just turned eighteen, and the photography session had created mixed emotions—it was exciting because it was a new experience but frightening because of its portents for her future.
What would she look like? Would the camera capture an image different from the one she had seen reflected in the dark mirror in her parents’ bedroom? Not that she was vain—she had never had time to worry about how she looked to others—she was just curious. This likeness would last forever. She was glad the photograph had included her parents and her younger brother. Perhaps her father would give her a copy to keep after she was married.
The photographer had lent her some fancy clothes to wear for the sitting. The garments had made her feel thloo muun, sophisticated, even though they had smelled fusty, redolent of many other nervous, unwashed, adolescent female bodies. In the dressing room, she had posed before the small mirror, tucking each forearm into the opposite sleeve of her jacket, pretending to be a landlord’s daughter with nothing better to do with her hands than hold a fan. She marvelled at the feel of her bare legs under the smooth fabric of the borrowed skirt. Her feet weren’t quite as comfortable. For the first time in her life, they were encased in socks, which itched worse than leech bites, and stuffed into a pair of cloth shoes too small for her. She had been relieved to be rid of those encumbrances, and couldn’t imagine anyone willingly wearing something so uncomfortable and impractical.
The feeling of those shoes cramping her toes gave Ah Thloo a sudden stab of grief for her beloved grandmother who had died only a short time earlier. She felt a simultaneous wave of empathy with her, as well as a renewed sense of pride in her grandmother’s endurance. How she missed those private evenings by Ah Ngange’s bedside!
The momentous photography session would start the next phase of her life. The photo was to be taken to the Moi Ngange, Matchmaker, who had found spouses for her three elder siblings. Ah Thloo’s personal information would be noted and scrutinized by potential in-laws; that was the worst part.
Ah Thloo knew that at eighteen, she was getting to be a law nui, old maid, and as she grew older, it would be harder and more expensive for her parents to marry her off. After much deliberation, they had finally agreed that they should find a suitable husband for their last daughter. As it was, her marriage would stretch their meagre savings. It had been a difficult decision, reluctantly made, for Ah Thloo had proven her value to the family over and over again.
Ah Thloo had never complained, even though her young back was starting to curve from bending over in the rice fields. She had relinquished her responsibilities of caring for the family’s water buffalo to her younger brother when she had moved to the nui oak four years ago, and besides working in the fields, she had also taken over the household chores from her ailing grandmother.
She was clever and creative with her hands. In the company of girls each evening, listening quietly to their gossip and singing the songs of life, Ah Thloo had been building up her trousseau and had completed a mosquito net, neatly embroidered bedding, and personal items like household slippers. Most of the pieces were created from carefully hoarded strips of used fabric. She had gratefully accepted skeins of colourful embroidery thread and beads from her friends for each Gwoh Nien, the New Year celebration.
Through her years of tutelage under Ah Ngange she had become a good cook. Her grandmother had taught her how to make a tasty meal in hard times out of whatever greens, grains, and tubers could be gathered. When times were better and they had meat, she could create a feast. For Gwoh Nien, she could wrap dim sum of any kind in uniform sizes. Everyone in the family agreed they were delicious, even when the stuffing was frugally short of meat. If mastery of the domestic arts was all that was necessary for being a good wife, Ah Thloo would excel.