SHOE

‘Yet death seeps through the bandages, strong and odorous....It is a smell of the living flesh being discontinued by a deadly bondage, a smell of life and death, of dirt and purity fermenting and brewing in exuberance  within a tightly compressed space. The interplay between the illusion of immortal beauty on the surface and the constant reminder of violence – decay, pain, and the deformity of the naked feet – from underneath brings eroticism into its final sense, that is, death’

Ping, Wang. (2000). Aching for Beauty:  Foot Binding in China.   Anchor Books.