Chinese Foot Binding The ancient Chinese custom of footbinding caused severe life-long suffering for the Chinese women involved. When researching the subject of footbinding, one of the difficult things is finding factual knowledge written before the 20th century. Most of the historical data has been gathered from writings, drawings and photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries. The first documented reference to footbinding was from the Southern Tang Dynasty in Nanjing. Although the history of footbinding is very vague it lasted for at least one thousand years. Early text referred to the Han Dynasty as people who preferred that the wo