The History of Foot Binding in China

For centuries, young girls in China were subjected to an extremely painful and debilitating procedure called foot binding.  Their feet were bound tightly with cloth strips, with the toes bent down under the sole of the foot, and the foot tied front-to-back so that the grew into an exaggerated high curve. The ideal adult female foot would be only three to four inches in length. These tiny, deformed feet were known as lotus feet. The fashion for bound feet began in the upper classes of Han Chinese society, but it spread to all but the poorest families.  Having a daughter with bound feet signified that the family was wealthy enough to forgo having her work in the fields—women with their feet bound could not walk well enough to do any sort of labor that involved standing for any length of time.  Because bound feet were considered beautiful, and because they signified relative wealth, girls with lotus feet were more likely to marry well. As a result, even some farming families that could not really afford to lose a childs labor would bind their eldest daughters feet in hopes of attracting rich husbands. Origins of Foot Binding Various myths and folktales relate to the origin of foot-binding in China. In one version, the practice goes back to the earliest documented dynasty, the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600 BCE–1046 BCE). Supposedly, the corrupt last emperor of the Shang, King Zhou, had a favorite concubine named Daji who was born with clubfoot. According to the legend, the sadistic Daji ordered court ladies to bind their daughters feet so that they would be tiny and beautiful like her own. Since Daji was later discredited and executed, and the Shang Dynasty soon fell, it seems unlikely that her practices would have survived her by 3,000 years. A somewhat more plausible story states that the emperor Li Yu (reign 961–976 CE) of the Southern Tang Dynasty had a concubine named Yao Niang who performed a lotus dance, similar to en pointe ballet.  She bound her feet into a crescent shape with strips of white silk before dancing, and her grace inspired other courtesans and upper-class women to follow suit. Soon, girls of six to eight years had their feet bound into permanent crescents. How Foot Binding  Spread During the Song Dynasty (960 - 1279), foot-binding became an established custom and spread throughout eastern China.  Soon, every ethnic Han Chinese woman of any social standing was expected to have lotus feet.  Beautifully embroidered and jeweled shoes for bound feet became popular, and men sometimes drank wine from womens footwear. When the Mongols overthrew the Song and established the Yuan Dynasty in 1279, they adopted many Chinese traditions—but not foot-binding. The far more politically influential and independent Mongol women were completely uninterested in permanently disabling their daughters to conform with Chinese standards of beauty. Thus, womens feet became an instant marker of ethnic identity, differentiating Han Chinese from Mongol women. The same would be true when the ethnic Manchus conquered Ming China in 1644 and established the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912).  Manchu women were legally barred from binding their feet. Yet the tradition continued strong among their Han subjects.   Banning the Practice In the latter half of the nineteenth century, western missionaries and Chinese feminists began to call for an end to foot-binding.  Chinese thinkers influenced by Social Darwinism fretted that disabled women would produce feeble sons, endangering the Chinese as a people. To appease the foreigners, the Manchu Empress Dowager Cixi outlawed the practice in a 1902 edict, following the failure of the anti-foreigner Boxer Rebellion. This ban was soon repealed. When the Qing Dynasty fell in 1911 and 1912, the new Nationalist government banned foot-binding again.  The ban was reasonably effective in the coastal cities, but foot-binding continued unabated in much of the countryside. The practice wasnt more or less completely stamped out until the Communists finally won the Chinese Civil War in 1949.  Mao Zedong and his government treated women as much more equal partners in the revolution and immediately outlawed foot-binding throughout the country because it significantly diminished womens value as workers.  This was despite the fact that several women with bound feet had made the Long March with the Communist troops, walking 4,000 miles through rugged terrain and fording rivers on their deformed, 3-inch long feet. Of course, when Mao issued the ban there were already hundreds of millions of women with bound feet in China.  As the decades have passed, there are fewer and fewer. Today, there are only a handful of women living out in the countryside in their 90s or older who still have bound feet.

Symptoms And Treatment Of Restless Leg Syndrome - 1698 Words

Restless leg syndrome, or also known as RLS and Willis-Ekbom Disease, is a neurological condition in which one experiences unpleasant sensations in the legs. The term RLS was introduced by a doctor named Karl-Axel Ekbom. Ekbom had a large number of patients complaining of â€Å"peculiar and tormenting paraesthesias deep in the lower legs† which led him to find out more. In 1944 he had already reported 8 patients with the same type of symptoms and by 1945 he had published a doctoral thesis called â€Å"Restless legs’: ‘a clinical study of a hitherto overlooked disease in the legs characterized by peculiar paraesthesia (‘Anxietas tibiarum’), pain and weakness and occurring in two main forms, asthenia crurum paresthetica and asthenia crurum dolorosa†Ã¢â‚¬ ¦show more content†¦Many of the symptoms occur at primarily at night when one is sleeping or relaxing and can be unilateral or on both sides. There are two names which is used to describe ma ny of the patient s sensations, an abnormal sensation is often called paresthesias and an unpleasant, uncomfortable sensation is called dysesthesias. These two names help to determine the intensity level which ranges in severity from uncomfortable to painful. Many of the patients go into the doctor and much of the interview is based off of self reporting and history. It is very important for doctors to listen to these symptoms to help make a correct diagnosis (Black Grant, 2014, pg 411). 2a Prevalence and Development of RLS The actually onset of RLS occurs mostly within the second to third decade of life. Many adults who are diagnosed with RLS have experienced many symptoms before diagnosis and into the their childhood or before the age of 20. As many as 10% report that they experienced symptoms before the age of 10 (Black Grant, 2014, pg 411). 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Assessing different approaches to customer service Free Essays

For my Customer Service Unit I will be interviewing two leisure centres, College of St. Mark and St. John and the Mayflower leisure Centre. We will write a custom essay sample on Assessing different approaches to customer service or any similar topic only for you Order Now I have chosen these two centres because they are slightly different and I thought it would be interesting to see how different companies have different customer service. The College of St. Mark and St. John is in Derriford, Plymouth. It covers a very large area and its facilities include a 25 metre indoor heated swimming pool, a fitness suite, two squash courts, a fully equipped gymnasium, three sports halls, each with four badminton courts and a specialist built-in rock-climbing wall, computing facilities, and an outdoor pursuits centre. In addition to extensive playing fields, there is a full size all-weather floodlit pitch for top level hockey and football. A smaller all-weather surface accommodates tennis and provides a good training surface all year round. In addition to this there is a 36m. square sports hall for participation in a variety of sports which is also large enough to accommodate Trade Fairs and other large events; a gymnasium for martial arts, aerobics, ‘step’ and tone trim classes; a standard size sports hall available for volleyball, basketball, badminton; 2 squash courts and a Fitness Suite with up to date cardiovascular and weight training equipment. Although this sports centre is within the college, it is open to any member of the public, not just the students at the college. The Mayflower Leisure Centre is situated in Central Park, Plymouth. It is quite old and may need to be revamped within the next few years. It’s facilities include a fitness suite which has treadmills, cross trainers, climbers, bikes, rowers and resistance machines and it also has squash courts, indoor bowls and sun beds. There are two sports halls, one is a 5-a-side football hall and the other is a multi purpose sports hall, which can house badminton, volleyball, basketball, short tennis and dry board diving. The College of St. Mark and St. John is a sports college therefore it has numerous amounts of sports facilities. The college is a Church of England voluntary college, with a history of over 150 years and it moved from London to Plymouth in 1973. The Mayflower Leisure Centre is quite old, as I mentioned previously but is the most well used public sector leisure facility in the area. It works in close partnership with the Central Park Swimming Pool which is it’s neighbouring building. To find out the information I want, I am going to visit each venue for an interview. For letter, see Appendix 1. I am going to ask them several questions on different topics to find out as much as I can about the Customer Service in their establishment. For questions, see Appendix 2. I will then analyse the answers of the questions and compare the two companies to see who has the best customer service. How to cite Assessing different approaches to customer service, Papers

Assessing different approaches to customer service Free Essays

For my Customer Service Unit I will be interviewing two leisure centres, College of St. Mark and St. John and the Mayflower leisure Centre. We will write a custom essay sample on Assessing different approaches to customer service or any similar topic only for you Order Now I have chosen these two centres because they are slightly different and I thought it would be interesting to see how different companies have different customer service. The College of St. Mark and St. John is in Derriford, Plymouth. It covers a very large area and its facilities include a 25 metre indoor heated swimming pool, a fitness suite, two squash courts, a fully equipped gymnasium, three sports halls, each with four badminton courts and a specialist built-in rock-climbing wall, computing facilities, and an outdoor pursuits centre. In addition to extensive playing fields, there is a full size all-weather floodlit pitch for top level hockey and football. A smaller all-weather surface accommodates tennis and provides a good training surface all year round. In addition to this there is a 36m. square sports hall for participation in a variety of sports which is also large enough to accommodate Trade Fairs and other large events; a gymnasium for martial arts, aerobics, ‘step’ and tone trim classes; a standard size sports hall available for volleyball, basketball, badminton; 2 squash courts and a Fitness Suite with up to date cardiovascular and weight training equipment. Although this sports centre is within the college, it is open to any member of the public, not just the students at the college. The Mayflower Leisure Centre is situated in Central Park, Plymouth. It is quite old and may need to be revamped within the next few years. It’s facilities include a fitness suite which has treadmills, cross trainers, climbers, bikes, rowers and resistance machines and it also has squash courts, indoor bowls and sun beds. There are two sports halls, one is a 5-a-side football hall and the other is a multi purpose sports hall, which can house badminton, volleyball, basketball, short tennis and dry board diving. The College of St. Mark and St. John is a sports college therefore it has numerous amounts of sports facilities. The college is a Church of England voluntary college, with a history of over 150 years and it moved from London to Plymouth in 1973. The Mayflower Leisure Centre is quite old, as I mentioned previously but is the most well used public sector leisure facility in the area. It works in close partnership with the Central Park Swimming Pool which is it’s neighbouring building. To find out the information I want, I am going to visit each venue for an interview. For letter, see Appendix 1. I am going to ask them several questions on different topics to find out as much as I can about the Customer Service in their establishment. For questions, see Appendix 2. I will then analyse the answers of the questions and compare the two companies to see who has the best customer service. How to cite Assessing different approaches to customer service, Papers