Rank, welcome to reading history according to the calendar. It has been more than a hundred years since the Qing Dynasty left us, and when we talk about the Qing Dynasty, we should have two basic impressions: the man with a big braid, and the woman with a pair of three-inch golden lotuses, both of which are also synonymous with decay and backward despotism.
This braid is indeed left to us by the Manchu Qing, and the three-inch golden lotus wrapped around it is really not left to us by the Qing Dynasty.
Chinese women have a history of foot binding for nearly a thousand years, and some people have studied that foot binding has probably been done since the Song Dynasty, and for the Manchu rulers, they were initially opposed to foot binding.
After the Manchu Qing entered the customs, an order was issued to all Han Chinese people - the shaving order. Leaving no hair and no hair, just because of this order, hundreds of thousands of Han people were slaughtered. In the TV series, why do you feel that the hair of Manchu Qing men is a lot of long, most of the brain shell is hair, how to call it leaving no hair, leaving hair without leaving head?
Because in the early days of the Qing Dynasty, the braids left were far less dense than the braids in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, and the braids at that time were really just a small money rat tail left on the whole big light head. If you want to tie that kind of braid, basically more than 90% of your hair is shaved.
The Manchu Qing believed that the Han people must first be conquered in appearance in order to completely conquer the Han people psychologically, so it was necessary for Han men to shave their hair and wear Manchu costumes instead.
This order was indeed thoroughly enforced, so much so that more than a hundred years later, when a Korean emissary came to Beijing to pay homage to the Manchu Emperor, he wore the clothes of his homeland, the costumes of the Ming Dynasty. The Qing officials also went to ask people that this dress was very beautiful, where was it passed down? Is it from the Shang Dynasty and the Jizi Joseon Dynasty?
The Han Chinese under Manchu rule forgot what kind of clothes they wore more than a hundred years ago, but when they gave the order to keep their heads without hair, there were actually three orders: shaving, changing clothes, and heavenly feet.
Shaving is for men, and the foot is for women. The Manchu rulers of the Manchus were outside Guanwai, women did not tie their feet, women also had to participate in labor, and even participate in war, so the Manchu Emperor said that it was too inappropriate for Han chinese to wrap their feet, men shaved their hair, and women should not tie their feet anymore.
In fact, from the perspective of later generations, the Manchu Qing dynasty did not let the Han people wrap their feet, and this order still had its advanced nature. However, this order was not completely implemented in the end, because on the one hand, not shaving the head was an immediate and visible order. If you want to shave, you can shave, and if you dare not shave, I will kill your head, which is easy to test.
But not to let women wrap their feet, this is not easy to test. Some women have become adults, and when they are young, they begin to wrap their feet until they reach adulthood, and their feet will not become larger, so of course these people cannot cut off their feet, so the Manchu Qing order is from now on, and all little girls are not allowed to wrap their feet anymore.
It's just that in the state of feudal society, the average girl does not go out of the door, and the family does not wrap the girl's feet, even local officials are difficult to have a very simple and effective means of testing. It is even possible to wrap your feet at home every day, and when you come to test it one day, you will not be able to see it.
More crucially, in ancient times, there was such a possibility: send a bunch of inspectors, go door to door to see if women have foot bindings, which cannot be technically done.
And since this order came down, some officials have constantly told the emperor that the matter of shaving the head has aroused the opposition of many ordinary people, to tell the truth, killing people has been numb, and then because of the matter of foot binding, are you not afraid that the people's grievances are really too boiling? Therefore, under the advice of officials at all levels, the order not to allow foot binding was not implemented.
Therefore, by the late Qing Dynasty, most ordinary people still had to tie their feet. In this sense, we really have to complain, if the Manchu Qing Dynasty could have taken the courage to keep their heads and no hair, and implemented the policy of not letting their feet be tied, Chinese women would really be able to suffer hundreds of years less!
Original author: Li Chengwei