Foot binding is to wrap a woman's feet tightly with long strips of cloth from an early age, making them smaller and deformed, thinking that they are beautiful. In the eyes of reformists and progressives in the late Qing Dynasty, foot binding, like opium and shaving, is one of the signs of social backwardness in China. In fact, foot-binding is a kind of "foreign culture" for Jilin women. Before Ming and Qing Dynasties, most Jilin people still lived a nomadic life. Women must farm and ride horses like men, and "little feet" are inconvenient for women. Emperor Taizong of the Qing Dynasty ordered Huang Taiji to forbid Manchu women to imitate Ming women. Shunzhi stipulates that if anyone resists foot-binding, his husband or father will stick 80 sticks and flow three thousand miles. After repeated orders, women with flags are not allowed to bind their feet. In the late Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also opposed foot binding. With the increase of immigrants from Northeast China, customs such as foot binding have also been brought in. 19 12 March 13 Sun Yat-sen, the interim president of the Republic of China, electrified the whole country to persuade people to ban foot binding, and Yuan Shikai, his successor since then, also made efforts to ban female foot binding. At this time, Jilin began to follow the pace of the whole country and banned bad habits such as male hair storage and female foot binding.
In Yuan Shikai's telegram urging the whole country to get rid of old habits, he wrote: "Its customs are really suffocating, such as foot binding, which should be changed urgently. I hope the gentry of the five ethnic groups (Han, Manchu, Mongolian, Hui and Tibetan) can seriously persuade the elderly ... ". After receiving the telegram, Governor Chen of Jilin immediately ordered the local government under his jurisdiction to take various concrete measures to persuade women to "let go of their feet", and the custom of foot-binding began to converge. 1929, the national government issued another notice, sending commissioners to all parts of the country to supervise the implementation of the plan. In a file of the Republic of China 18 (1929) collected by Jilin Provincial Archives, the Civil Affairs Department of Jilin Province submitted to the Ministry of the Interior that foot-binding in Jilin Province had been banned according to the order, saying: "The Ministry of the Interior consulted and investigated various regulations on foot-binding for braided women, and banned them after the passage period. However, there were many people who were enthusiastic about investigation and guidance at that time, and many people thought that writing was not effective. " It can be seen from the archives that although foot-binding has been banned in Jilin Province for many years 10, the effect is not significant. The custom of foot-binding in Jilin area was popular late, but the thoughts in Jilin area were relatively closed and conservative, and some feudal thoughts survived after the collapse of Qing Dynasty. The custom of foot-binding in Jilin Province will disappear completely after the national liberation at the latest.
In addition to foot-binding, feudal society also had strict restrictions on women's hairstyles. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, women in Jilin still insisted on the habit of young girls with short braids, young girls with long braids and adult women with buns. A knot in your hair indicates that you have become a woman, which is the end of your virgin career. This is also the origin of the word "end". Therefore, on the eve of the May 4th New Culture Movement, the hair styles of old women in China were all changed on the basis of long hair. Before and after the May 4th New Culture Movement, new women's haircuts in cities became a landscape that contacted with new thoughts, and women's haircuts in big cities in Northeast China became a common practice. But even such a trivial matter today had many obstacles in Jilin Province at that time. The provincial archives collected a submission from Zhao Bingwen and Xu Hongzhi, squires of Jilin Province in the Republic of China 18, defending the ethical code of forbidding women to cut their hair short, which wrote: "For thousands of years, China has been known as the country of ethical code, and men and women have different seats, so it is far from suspicion and rudeness. Since the Ye Reform and Reform in the late Qing Dynasty, all places where women are bound have been striving for liberation, so that there is freedom to meet in heaven and choose marriage. Recently, there is a general order that ears and rings are not allowed. This is nothing more than seeking happiness for women, and no one regards a haircut as an urgent matter. Why? I heard that the government ordered men not to grow hair and women not to bind their feet. It's women who cut their hair, but the party leaders don't think so. Why else didn't they follow suit when they ordered? Moreover, the style of men's haircut recently is no different from that of women's haircut. Clothes and shoes are all new, regardless of gender. If women are allowed to have their hair cut again, who is the man and who is the woman? Will it be safe? " These squires are really connected. Among them, Zhao Bingwen was the speaker of a local council during the Republic of China. Supposedly, his thoughts should be very progressive, but it is still unacceptable for women to cut their hair short. The reason why these squires object to women's hair cutting is also "reasonable", that is, there is "rumor" that a girls' school in a certain place was mixed with two boys because of lax management, and it was discovered several months later. The reason why boys can get into the school is because a woman in the school cut her hair short, so the two boys were not recognized as soon as they entered the school. In the eyes of these squires, women can dress like men now, and if their hair is as short as men's, it is difficult to distinguish between men and women.
Times have changed. After the founding of New China, equality between men and women was written into the Constitution, which was later defined as a basic national policy. Women have long been liberated from the bondage of foot-binding, and hairstyles are no longer subject to various restrictions. However, through these files, people can learn about the situation that "foot-binding" and "women's short hair" were forbidden in Jilin Province during the Republic of China, which proved the hard way for Jilin women to pursue equal rights before the founding of New China.