"Nevertheless, he was not content, however great his urgency, to settle for less and live the rest of his days with a wife who had large feet and a strong charcter."
Daughter of Fortune Isabel Allende

Which, of course, led to an internet search on the Chinese practice of foot binding. Which I maintained from the beginning must have been a man's idea. So the website tells, a Chinese prince over 1,000 years ago admired the small "golden lilly" feet of one of his concubines and thus the tradition of bending over the toes of a small female child, breading her foot at the arch and twisting the broken feet up on themselves. The feet were then bound with tight winding cloths and eventually the feet would shrink so that an adult woman's feet could fit into tiny slippers only three to four inches long. Of course she had to keep the slippers on all the time because not only where the "golden lillies" ugly as all get out-- the deformed and mutilated bones would begin to seep a "foul smelling substance."

The women could not walk more than a few (very small, shuffling) steps before she was beset with terrible pain. She was only an ornament.

The practice of foot binding continued until 1911 when it was banned by the new government.

fyi be very careful looking up "foot binding" on the internet . . . much like granny squares, things can easily go awry!