The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 139

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

139

printed paper in China when it comes to changing
old customs.

Perhaps an explanation as to how this foot-
binding is done would be appreciated. Although
Mei-hsio’s feet were not bound until she was eleven
or twelve years of age, “ordinarily it is done between
the ages of five and eight. Bandages of strong white
cotton cloth, three inches wide and six feet long, are
wound tightly around the foot, bending the four
smaller toes under the sole, so as to narrow the foot.
These bandages are tightened every day, causing
great pain to the child, which is compelled to keep
walking, so as not to let the circulation cease.
After the first year the foot is bandaged in a dif-
ferent manner, the heel being drawn tightly up to
the ball of the great toe, so as to shorten the foot.
The fashionable length is three Chinese inches
(about four American inches). The bandages are
so placed that the foot does not form an angle with
the leg, but seems a prolongation of it. The bones
of the instep are made to bulge and form an arch
resembling the crescent moon. Often gangrene sets
in, and a Chinese writer has said that there are
many who die from the after-effects of foot-
binding.” (ncyclopedia Sinica.) In former days,
that is, days before the present century, it was so
universal that no self-respecting man wanted to
marry a girl with big feet. On account of its uni-
versality, often when parents would not bind the
girl’s feet, she would weep bitterly, asking that her
feet be bound, and when the request was not com-
plied with, she would do so herself. The pain that
these girls have to bear is indescribable, especially
when clubs are used to pop the toes out of joint to
make them fold under the foot the more easily.
And then all through life the poor women must
walk as cripples, slowly and painfully meandering
along, subject to many sicknesses and especially to
frozen feet in winter.

We are glad to note that the custom is fast
becoming extinct; only a very few in our vicinity
now secretly practise it. When the missionary’s
wife first saw the case spoken of above, the ignorant
mother was preparing to break the toes and start
the binding process on Mei-hsio’s younger sister;
but the missionary’s wife pleaded with her not to
do so, even though her future husband would object,
and to date she has not done so. We hope she will
continue to refrain from doing it.

Though this does not come directly under the
preaching of the Gospel, we feel that we must oppose
such cruel customs. -Sin has already so degraded

our bodies and so weakened them and so robbed
them of the beauty that once must have been theirs
before our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell into
sin that we must show our people not only to be-
lieve in their Savior, but also to cease from
further abuse of our God-given body, in which the
Holy Ghost takes up His abode as soon as faith
has been kindled in the heart. Please pray for your
missionaries and especially for their wives that they
may not weaken in bringing the saving Word to
these many heathen. After they have embraced
Christ as their Savior, they will surely turn from
their wicked ways and not only be prepared to enter
heaven, but even on earth will live to be better men
and women and children.
Shasi, China.

E. C. Z.

A Cold Country.

Yes, Greenland is a cold country, very far away
in the North. The people who live there are dressed
in furs, as you may see from pictures. Nothing else
is warm enough in that cold land, which for nearly
nine months is all covered with snow. The inhabi-
tants of that country live mostly on seal’s flesh,
blubber, and oil. Still they are very proud of their
country. Some time ago a few of them were brought
to Copenhagen and were supplied with the comforts
of life; but very soon they became homesick and
longed to be taken back to their “dear father-
land,” complaining that there was no “regular cold
weather” in Europe and that there were no seals
to be caught. Well, we think those who hear the
Gospel in Greenland -can live and die happy, even
if it is a cold and dreary country. And, thank
God, missionaries have brought the Gospel to
Greenland’s icy mountains. The Danish Lutheran
Mission has at present eight stations there, ten mis-
sionaries, and the mission numbers about 8,000
members. God has richly blessed the work begun
by that heroic and faithful Lutheran missionary
Hans Egede.

Hans Egede was pastor of the Norwegian Lu-
theran Church in the village of Vaagen. He once
read in an old book about a distant land which had
been discovered by the Norwegians in the latter part
of the tenth century, but with which there had been
no communication since the middle of the fifteenth
century. It was a land hemmed in by seas and
bergs of ice. And there was no Gospel there! This
moved the heart of the dear village pastor. He
longed to bring the tidings of a loving Savior to the