GIRLS WITH BOUND FEET SMOKING DOPE in an OPIUM DEN in CANTON — the Addicts World of OLD CHINA
A few nice opium addiction images I found:
GIRLS WITH BOUND FEET SMOKING DOPE in an OPIUM DEN in CANTON — The Addicts World of OLD CHINA
Image by Okinawa Soba
It probably made their feet feel a whole lot better !
Let’s see…If a girl with bound and broken feet married a heroin addict, that would keep it all in the family…..especially in a family where the bride had had the bones of her own feet broken at a younger age simply to increase her chances of "marrying for money" — which is a whole ‘nother discussion we won’t get into here about the prime reason a certain percentage of women will throw themselves at certain men.
"…….At that time, bound feet were a status symbol, and the only way for a woman to marry into money. In Wang’s case, her in-laws had demanded the matchmaker find their son a wife with tiny feet. It was only after the wedding, when she finally met her husband for the first time, that she discovered he was an opium addict. With a life encompassing bound feet and an opium-addict husband, she’s a remnant from another age……." (About a still-living bound-foot Chinese women in 2007…who still suffered enough pain at age 86 that she found it hard to put her feet on the ground. www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=8966942 )
Girl on the left is probably reading a newspaper article about how China wanted to get rid of Opium, but had it rammed down their throats by the British !
"…….The Opium Wars, also known as the Anglo-Chinese Wars, lasted from 1839 to 1842 and 1856 to 1860, the climax of a trade dispute between China under the Qing Dynasty and the British Empire. British smuggling of opium from British India into China in defiance of China’s drug laws erupted into open warfare between Britain and China.
China’s defeat in both wars left its government having to tolerate the opium trade. Britain forced the Chinese government into signing the Treaty of Nanjing and the Treaty of Tianjin, also known as the Unequal Treaties, which included provisions for the opening of additional ports to foreign trade, for fixed tariffs; for the recognition of both countries as equal in correspondence; and for the cession of Hong Kong to Britain.
The British also gained extraterritorial rights. Several countries followed Britain and sought similar agreements with China. Many Chinese found these agreements humiliating and these sentiments are considered to have contributed to the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864), the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), and the downfall of the Qing Dynasty in 1912, putting an end to dynastic China. The Opium Wars forcefully and suddenly opened China to the world……"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
Full stereoview image seen here : www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/3489657647/in/photostr…
The gruesome details of how the feet were actually crushed are found in the caption of this photo : www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/3462167744/in/set-7215…
Here…. have a look under the wrappings : www.flickr.com/photos/24443965@N08/3461349265/in/set-7215…
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Photographed in 1900 by an unknown camera man sent out by Ben Kilburn of New Hampshire, USA, to take photos for his line of stereoviews. This photographer, who liked closely cropped images of people groups, toured Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines taking hundreds of classic images.