我常常喜欢听音乐。我觉得BoA有意思。她是好唱歌手。BoA是韩国人，可是也常中文，日文，和美文。我也喜欢常常听CoCo Lee(李玟)。 我喜欢她的歌。你也可音听她！
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoTMrq-EATI&feature=channel_page
A Chinese cultural aspect that I find interesting is the subject of footbinding. This subject is very controversial. Most Westerners think of footbinding as a degrading, terrible and tradition. I will show you the truth of this ancient Chinese practice. Footbinding began around 970 A.D. The most common myth about how footbinding began is with Li Yu, who ordered his favorite concubine to dance "on her toes" in a giant, 12 foot lotus made of gold and precious jewels. The other maidens at court were astounded at her beauty and grace and soon began wrapping their own feet in strips of silk. Soon the custom was passed down out of the palace and evolved into footbinding. Eventually the wrappings began to be pulled tighter and tighter until the Golden Lotus (the name derived from the platform the concubine danced in) came to be stood for 3-inch long feet. The process of binding feet was very painful and ended in death for many unlucky girls. Still, the tradition carried on until the 1920's.
Even though binding their feet was painful, the girls still did it, mostly because it was how they were brought up, to obey their parents without question. Chinese girls lived in a very patriarchal society, and had no was of bettering themselves. Their mothers, who had bound feet, wrapped their daughters' out of love, because the smaller the feet, the better chance of getting a rich husband. Girls started to bind their feet when they were young, 5-7, when the bones were still pliable. A fortuneteller would arrive and divine the best date to do it on, almost always in late September when the cold of winter would be able to numb the girl's feet. After hand sewing tiny shoes for the Bound Foot Maiden and making an offering of rice cakes and red-bean paste dumplings, the process of foot binding began.
First the feet were soaked in a special concoction, passed down through the mother. The concoction would be hot water, and sometimes things like urine, animals blood, and roots. After the feet were soaked and scrubbed to get ride of dead skin, the toe nails were cut short and sprinkled liberally with an astringent, alum. They were then wrapped in such a way as to bring the four toes under neath the ball of the foot and to bring the toes close to the heel. The process of binding took two agonizing years, tightening the bindings until the desired length had been achieved.
Han girls weren't the only ones to bind their feet. Some male actors and prostitutes bound their feet as well to be more appealing. Manchu women, who were forbidden to bind their feet but liked the look, would make special shoes that were either raised on platforms, or were made in such a way as to look like the small shoes. Although the girls were proud of their small feet, they also "cheated" to make their feet look smaller. The shoes' soles often contained a wooden support that raised the heel on an incline (like high heel shoes today). With this incline, they could make their shoes, and thus their feet, look smaller.
Eventually footbinding was outlawed (1911), due to the problems it raised and the disgust of other countries. People went around China forced girls (and women) to unbind their feet, even though this often caused even more pain, since the foot no longer had the support from the bindings. Even though people today may shudder at what the girls had to go through to obtain beauty, they should remember that the 1000 year old tradition is hardly different then the odd things people do to obtain the "perfect figure," whether it be tattoos, piercings, or body alterations, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
