Foot binding

There were many famous people who were known for their great adventures and their great discoveries of other countries. Yet Marco Polo is most definitely one of the most well known travellers and traders that had Ever lived, His sense of travel did not occur overnight as his Family was a merchant one it was unavoidable that Marco will follow the footsteps of his father Niccolo and uncle Maffeo and join them in their trading business.In this essay I will analyse the processes that lead to Marco…

Shared Pain, Reluctant Heroes With a 50 foot extension cord tied to his waist and the other end tied to the back of a truck, Robbie struggled to rappel down a 60+ foot sheer abyss towards the glacial waters of Lake Kachess hidden below the towering alpines, risking his life and his family’s future to rescue a stranger; the father of a teenaged daughter and her mother, whom Robbie, my son, and his wife, Kara, had come across only minutes ago. I was immediately thrown back to this perilous August…

in close-quarters combat. Bows or yumi were the most popular weapon utilized by onna-bugeisha in the Heian and Kamakura Periods before the creation of the katana. According to Bloomberg (1994) Japanese archers fired arrows up to 60 meters while on foot or horseback. Art of the Samurai describes that unlike most European bows, yumi were asymmetrical as the top bow limb is significantly longer than the bottom portion. The length of theses bows can hover over 7 feet long, further setting them…

Red Sorghum, by Mo Yan, is a fascinating read playing with time and effectively displaying early twentieth century China. Aside from the obvious tantalizing description of how events conspire in the book, there is a clear definition of what society is going through at this time period. War affected all of China, including the lives of peasant famers trying to make a living. In context, the novel offers plenty of information form symbolism to the gore that war brings which eventually either takes…

In an account of her grandmother’s life, Pang-Mei Natasha Chang establishes the story of how Chang Yu-i continually challenges the old standards set by Chinese traditions. As she introduces her grandmother, she is already described as someone different than Chang Yu-i’s sisters; she speaks to the author in a more modern tone and is described as “more masculine”. From a young age, she did not have her feet bound. Based on what she saw as her brothers were being tutored, she also wanted to have an…

For example in China foot binding was a common practice, because large feet were considered ugly. However, what was truly ugly was the idea that people had to cripple themselves for the sake of beauty. Clear, youthful looking skin and light natural looking makeup is the craze in…

In today’s society, the reduction of cultural diversity through the popularization and diffusion of a wide array of cultural symbols has disallowed an honest conversation between African and Western feminists because Western feminists tend to take the position of superiority. Western women have a tendency to believe that they are more liberated than non-Western women, and therefore have the responsibility to ensure that other women can achieve a similar liberation. For instance, in the…

For example, Russia outlawed forced marriages in 1722, India banned sati (a funeral ritual within some Asian communities in which a recently widowed woman sacrifices herself, typically on her husband’s funeral pyre) in 1829, and China abolished foot binding in 1902. Unfortunately, not every country has stayed with the times. In Saudi Arabia and Vatican City, women are still not even allowed to vote. India had a female president from 2007 to 2012, yet women still face many inequalities there,…

Odysseus: Son of Pain In Homer 's The Odyssey, a king, Alcinous, urges the protagonist, Odysseus, "Come, tell us the name they call you there at home [...] Surely no man is nameless [...] as soon as he sees the light his parents always name him, once he 's born" (209 • 618-622). Odysseus 's name, in fact, carries great significance. It means "son of pain," and through the course of the poem, the reader can understand how fitting this name is for this character. Odysseus, son of pain, seems to…

“Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.” - Neil Armstrong, the man who first set his foot on the moon, then a distant object and a source of awe; and it is in this quest of surmounting the unconquered and taming the wild which denotes man’s insatiate desire to understand Nature. Evolution has been the fundamental reason for progress of life on earth and the eclectic strategies employed by Mother Nature in the eternal perpetuation of the process are simply…