Ties That Bind, Ties That Break

“Embroidering! I couldn’t think of anything worse than sitting on a stool for hours and hours like my sisters, poking a needle through a piece of cloth. As for stopping me from running around…”

This early quote gives insight into Ailin’s personality as a young girl. She has these thoughts while her Grandmother and Mrs. Liu are discussing the fact that her feet are not yet bound. Mrs. Liu points out that Ailin will have time for sewing when she has gone through the binding process. From the beginning, Ailin finds the idea repulsive. She can’t even finish the thought about limiting her mobility; the idea is one she is loath to even consider. 

“’I don’t see why a girl can’t go to an outside school!’ I protested. But I did feel a touch of doubt. Already I had learned from Mother and my amah that there were certain things boys could do that girls couldn’t.”

In the beginning of the narrative, Ailin meets her husband-to-be, Liu Hanwei. They talk about how he is attending a public school, and Hanwei tells her a little about what he is learning. Young as she is, Ailin is being indoctrinated into the customs of her upper-middle-class life in China. She doesn’t understand them, because from her point of view she should be able to do anything a boy does, but she will soon learn that this is not the case.

“When Mrs. Liu saw Ailin the other day, she was shocked that her feet were still unbound. She also remarked on how spirited Ailin was. In other words, she found her spoiled and uncontrollable.”

The main event that influences everything else in this narrative is Ailin’s refusal to have her feet bound. She is an active child with her own mind—a state that is not desirable to her family or others who wish to ally themselves with the Taos.