AustLit

'During the Tang Dynasty in the Kingdom of Wu, a certain duke, forced to marry a woman of the Miao, decides to employ the skills of his terrestrial genie to prepare a potion that when applied will enhance the lady's allure and so promote the necessary consummation of his marriage.

'The prescription is in two parts: a phial full of the love potion and an amulet to be hung around the neck of duke. Unfortunately the delivery and application of this elixir is entrusted to a clubfooted drunkard who bungles the operation with his lack of dexterity. The potion is spilled and the amulet changes hands several times, with the result that the clubfooted imbecile becomes a pirouetting beauty in the eyes of the duke. To keep the duke entranced Clubfoot enhances his feet with bindings, which the duke can't help but admire, but when Clubfoot is imprisoned and executed, the Duke searches for a substitute. There are disposable young girls aplenty in Wu, and the Duke soon acquires a young beauty on whom he can apply all the arts of feet shrinking formerly practised by Clubfoot, but now perfected by the obsessed Duke.

'David Foster's account of the origins of foot binding in China is told in the manner of tale from one of the Thousand and One Nights.'

Source: ABC Radio National's website, http://www.abc.net.au/
Sighted: 11/08/2008